The "Destruction of Affordable Fashion Bill" or IDPPPA gets one step closer to becoming Fashion Law : Fashion Law

I thought the Vessel Hull Design Protection Act (1998, renewed 2008) was a bad idea and I think this one is too. I am generally hostile to anti-competitive measures.  Hull designs already had three levels of protection:  1) design patent protection under the Patent Act, 2) trade dress protection under the Lanham Act, and 3) “original design” protection under the Copyright Act.   Fashion designs have these protections too.

Prof. Susan Scafidi

The Innovative Design and Piracy Protection Act would extend the Vessel Hull Design protection to any article of clothing.  Now it  has passed the Judiciary Committee and is ready for a vote in the Senate.  One can only hope that since they can't get the important things done on Capitol Hill  they will find no time to do the unimportant.  As Fashion Law Blog puts it: The "Destruction of Affordable Fashion Bill" or IDPPPA gets one step closer to becoming Fashion Law : Fashion Law

The bill is celebrated by my genuinely chic colleague (and bill prime mover) Susan Scafidi at Counterfeit Chic.    Despite the adequate protection already provided this act would create a protected class so broadly defined that it would prove either useless or vexatious or both:

A ‘fashion design’--

‘(A) is the appearance as a whole of an article of apparel, including its ornamentation; and

‘(B) includes original elements of the article of apparel or the original arrangement or placement of original or non-original elements as incorporated in the overall appearance of the article of apparel that--

‘(i) are the result of a designer’s own creative endeavor; and

‘(ii) provide a unique, distinguishable, non-trivial and non-utilitarian variation over prior designs for similar types of articles.