This is a print on demand edition of a hard to find publication. Under current intellectual property laws, industrial designs (ID) may potentially be protected through design patents, trade dress, and copyright. In addition, the Vessel Hull Design Protection Actestablished a specialized, or sui generis, intellectual property right for the protection of boat hull designs. Some experts argue that the present intellectual property regime does not adequately protect ID. Contents of this report: (1) ID and Intellectual Property: Copyright; Trade Dress; Design Patents; Vessel Hull Design Protection; (2) Current Issues in ID Protection: Intellectual Property Rights in Fashion Designs; U.S. Adherence to the Hague Convention; Auto Spare Parts; Judicial Developments Concerning ID Patents; (3) Issues in Innovation and Competition.

This book traces the development of the fashion industry, providing insight into the business and, in particular, its interrelations with copyright law. The book explores how the greatest haute couture fashion designers also had a sense for business and that their attention to copyright was one of the weapons in protecting their market position. The work also confronts the peculiarities of the fashion industry as a means of demonstrating the importance of intellectual property protection while pointing out the many challenges involved. A central aim is to provide a copyrightability test for fashion goods based on detailed analysis of the legal regulations in the USA and EU countries, specifically Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany and Poland. The book will be of interest to researchers and academics working in the areas of Intellectual Property Law, Copyright Law, Business Law, Fashion Law and Design.

Exploring the debate over the benefits of legal protection for fashion design, this book focuses on how a combination of minimal legal protections for design, evolving social norms, digital technology, and market forces can promote innovation and creativity in a business known for its fast-paced remixing and borrowing. Focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of the main US and EU IP laws that protect fashion design in the world’s biggest fashion markets, it describes how recent US case law in copyright and trademark cases has led to misaligned incentives for the industry and a lack of clear protection, while, in the EU, the CJEU’s interpretation of the pan-European design rights system has created significant overlap with copyright law and risks, leading to the overprotection of design. The book proposes that creativity and innovation in fashion derive some benefit from a limited unregistered design right protection, and that cumulation with copyright protection is unhelpful. It also proposes that there is a larger role for developing social norms relating to sustainability, the ethics of cultural appropriation, and the online shaming of counterfeiters that can also help create a fair equilibrium between protection and borrowing in fashion design.

Hanns Ullrich, this highly renowned legal scholar, has had a tremendous influence on legal research and the development of the law in the fields of both Technology and Competition. His expertise dates back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when he served as a member of the research staff at the Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property in Munich. In 1985, he became professor of law at the "Universität der Bundeswehr", Munich, and finally, in 2000, professor at the european University Institute, florence. He has acted as visiting professor at a number of Universities around the worldincluding, in particular, the College of Europe, Bruges. The authors of the contributions in this book feel greatly indebted to Hanns Ullrich. Much earlier than others, he recognised and explained that, in the absence of pressure from competition, intellectual property will not be able to fulfil its mission of enhancing innovation. In concentrating on the fields of interest of this eminent scholar, the contributions address a number of the most burning issues of the regulation of intellectual property, competition law and, of course, the application of competition law to IP-related cases.

Driven by a counterintuitive thesis that has been highlighted in both The New Yorker and The New York Times¸ The Knockoff Economy is an engrossing and highly entertaining tour through the economic sectors where piracy both rules and invigorates.