Intellectual property rights and fashion

Here’s an interesting WSJ article on intellectual property rights and fashion. Apparently, some prominent fashion designers are lobbying for three years of copyright-like protection on original works of fashion (similar protections exist in Europe).

The key question is innovation; would copyright-like protection encourage innovation or stymie innovation? Who would benefit from such a law? What would the unintended consequences be?

I suspect counterfeiters would benefit from passage, since they probably compete to some extent with the knockoffs that would be handicapped by the legislation (illegal counterfeit fashion features a fraudulent designer label, whereas a legal knockoff is similar in design to a designer item but does not carry a fraudulent label.)

You can read a previous post of mine on intellectual property rights and food here.