Design Piracy Prohibition Act
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The Design Piracy Prohibition Act, S. 1957, is a bill pending in the United States Senate that would extend copyright protection to fashion designs for a period of three years. The bill, which will amend the Copyright Act of 1976, was introduced March 30, 2006 by Representative Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), with six co-sponsors from both parties, and then referred to the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. On Thursday, August 2, 2007, in Washington, D.C. Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced the Design Piracy Prohibition Act (S1957: The Schumer-Hutchison-Feinstein Bill) in the United States Senate.
The Act would extend protection to "the appearance as a whole of an article of apparel, including its ornamentation," with "apparel" defined to include "men's, women's, or children's clothing, including undergarments, outerwear, gloves, footwear, and headgear;" "handbags, purses, and tote bags;" belts, and eyeglass frames. In order to receive the three-year term of protection, the designer would be required to register with the U.S. Copyright Office within three months of going public with the design.
Currently, fashion may only be protected by copyright to the extent that its shape is non-utilitarian enough to qualify as a creative "sculpture," or to the extent that a design, pattern, or image on the clothing qualifies as "pictorial" or "graphic." While current laws against counterfeit goods do provide some protection for designers, this is so only when the trademark is used and not when merely the design is copied under a different label. Technological advances to the means of textile and garment production, as well as increases in the number of distribution channels and the availability of cheap labor in emerging economies have enabled those who would copy these designs to do so quickly and inexpensively. Legislation targeting design piracy has already been enacted in Europe, India, and Japan.
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[edit] Subcommittee hearing and debate
The U.S. House Subcomittee on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property held a hearing on the bill on July 27, 2006, at which there was disagreement among legal experts as well as representatives of the fashion industry as to whether there was a need for copyright protection. Proponents of the Act claimed that new technology threatened American designers' ability to compete with the products of lower-cost countries, because the distribution of images of new designs and the automation of copying and manufacturing could occur within hours. They additionally pointed out that the United States was the exception among western nations in failing to protect designs.
Critics argued that the industry is already thriving commercially and encourages innovation. They further argued that originality in fashion design is too insubstantial for copyright law to distinguish protected elements from non-protected elements, such that extending copyright protection would "stifle the fashion industry."
[edit] See also
Text of Bill: [1]
[edit] References
- Witnesses Clash on Need for Granting Copyright Protection to Fashion Designs, Anandashankar Mazumdar. BNA's Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal, August 4, 2006.
