ABSTRACT
The devastating consequences of human activity, damaging the environment over the past decades, are a wake-up call for humans to think about their actions. One of the harmful areas that threaten sustainability is the fast-fashion industry. To reduce the pernicious impact of fleeting fashion on the environment, comprehensive global measures are required. Simultaneously, from the perspective of intellectual property law, strengthening the legal protection of fashion design would be another step forward. The lack of intellectual property protection for fashion designs leads to widespread unauthorized copying of designs by fast-fashion manufacturers in large quantities, which deprives creators of a fair reward for their creations and negatively affects the environment, depleting and polluting its resources.
The laws of different countries vary in the extent to which these rights are protected; therefore, the best solution would be international harmonization. This Article discusses the alarming situation created by the fast-fashion, compares the laws of the major countries involved in the fashion industry, and proposes strengthening global fashion design copyright protection through the harmonization of these rules in the Berne Convention and the TRIPS Agreement in the hope of reducing the adverse impact of fast-fashion on sustainability around the world.
Tarverdi, Leyla, Protecting Fashion Design: A Comparative Legal Approach and an Environmental Justification (December 4, 2021). Forthcoming in University of San Francisco’s Intellectual Property and Technology Law Journal in 2022.
First posted 2022-04-22 09:00:29
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