Fashion Design : The Paradox and the Public Domain

Fashion Design

  Although some scholars argue that today fashion design should be protected under intellectual property rights, some scholars make arguments that the protection of fashion design is meaningless. Only in an environment of weak IP protection of fashion design, the public domain can be extended. One of the most famous arguments is called “piracy paradox”.

A. Piracy Paradox Theory and Fashion Design

  Since the born of intellectual property rights, it has been developing with balancing the private rights and public interests. However, usually it is hardly to find a proper balance point between the private rights and public interests in practice. Piracy Paradox argues that scholars shall pay more attention to the public interests and less attention to the private rights to fashion design protection. In other way, “[w]eaken individual designers and strengthen the industry and drives its evolution.”