Susan Scafidi was quoted in a Hello Giggles article about legal protection for designers in the fashion industry.
The current law is not written to favor designers. According to Susan Scafidi, founder of the Fashion Law Institute at Fordham University, the three types of legal protection available to designers are copyright, trademarks and patents. While designers can often protect things like illustrations, jewelry and prints under copyright, anything considered “functional” is excluded and unfortunately, this includes the majority of fashion design. As Scafidi puts it in an interview with Fashionista.com, “for 100 years in the U.S., the copyright office has said fashion is functional.” Trademarks, on the other hand, work to protect a brand name, as well as certain symbols and logos associated with it and only as long as they’ve registered them under protection as a trademark. Lastly, patents are reserved for inventions that serve a function. Many designers are now trying their hand at securing design patents, however these can run anywhere between $1500- $3000 per style, so it’s easy to understand why such an investment might not be feasible for a small brand.
