COPYCENSE

“For the past several years, as the music and movie industries have gradually consolidated ever more authoritarian control over their copyrights, the fashion industry has been held up as an implicit rebuke to their autocratic ways. Fashion, the story goes, is a similarly creative industry, yet it operates with essentially no prohibition against design copying.

“This laissez-faire idyll may soon be a thing of the past, though. The Council of Fashion Designers of America is meeting with members of Congress tomorrow to gather support for a bill to offer copyrightlike protection to clothing designs.”

Henry Lanman. Copycatfight. Slate. March 13, 2006.

See also:

CopyCense. Lawsuits? Fashion Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Lawsuits. March 1, 2006.

Updates:

Eric Wilson. O.K., Knockoffs, This Is War. The New York Times. March 30, 2006

CopyCense™: K. Matthew Dames on the intersection of business, law and technology. A business venture of Seso Digital LLC.