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Fashion and Intellectual Property: "So Called Piracy, Actually Drives Industry"

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  • Fashion and Intellectual Property: "So Called Piracy, Actually Drives Industry"

    from ARS TECHNICA:





    Why does the fashion industry thrive in spite of rampant IP "piracy"?


    In a forthcoming Virginia Law Review paper, entitled "The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design," two law professors investigate how the fashion industry manages to thrive despite rampant copying of clothing designs.

    The paper's authors, Kal Raustiala of the University of California, and Chris Sprigman, start by observing that the fashion industry has what they term a "low-IP equilibrium," in which clothing designs enjoy almost no copy protection and designers frequently turn large profits by copying each others' work. In spite of the lack of IP protection for clothing designs—or rather, because of this lack, the authors argue—the fashion industry remains vibrant and profitable, exhibiting none of the negative effects on creativity that advocates of strong intellectual property (IP) rights would predict in the absence of government-enforced monopolies on creative "content."

    Part of the overall reason for undertaking this investigation of the fashion industry is to question the standard assumptions about the relationship between intellectual property laws and incentives to create that underly all of modern intellectual property law. The standard theory goes that if a creator's exclusive right to profit from the distribution of her work is not protected by law, then creators will lose the incentive to create, as "free riders" drive down the price of the work by filling the market with copies.

    This theory may hold true for books (the original "intellectual property" of Renaissance IP debates), inventions, and music, but it's apparently a poor fit for the fashion industry. If it weren't for widespread copying of clothing and accessory designs, there would be no such thing as a "fashion trend." The fashion industry, it seems, has settled into a relatively stable state (an equilibrium) in which a large amount of intellectual property "piracy" effectively drives the market.

    Note: I'm going to keep putting the word "piracy" in those annoying scare-quotes because it's a terrible term for IP infringement. If pirates hijack a shipload of cannonballs in the Mediterranean, then the owners of that shipment are now short a few tons of cannonballs. If I download a copy of a song from a P2P service, then the owner of that IP may be out some money (assuming I would otherwise have bought that track elsewhere), but they're still in possession of the IP for the song; I haven't taken anyone's property from them, and it's not even clear that I've cost them any money if I wouldn't otherwise have purchased the track. Infringement, though illegal and possibly costly to an IP owner, does not equal piracy or theft, and the misuse of the term in this paper is unfortunate.

    Anyway, Raustiala and Sprigman locate the roots of the fashion industry's successful low-IP equilibrium in two factors: induced obsolescence and anchoring.

    Induced obsolescence

    Because clothing is closely tied to status, especially in the realm of fashion, every design eventually becomes obsolete (i.e. it goes out of style) when it loses its ability to confer status on the wearer. When is something well and truly out of style? When everybody is wearing it, and that's where the open nature of fashion copying helps drive the fashion market. The authors write:


    As Miucci Prada put it recently, "We let others copy us. And when they do, we drop it." The fashion cycle is driven faster, in other words, by widespread design copying, because copying erodes the positional [ed: or "status-conferring"] qualities of fashion goods. Designers in turn respond to this obsolescence with new designs. In short, piracy paradoxically benefits designers by inducing more rapid turnover and additional sales... What was elite quickly becomes mass.


    So rampant, unauthorized copying drives the fashion cycle, and in doing so it spurs designer creativity; this is the opposite of what the standard assumptions about the relationship between unauthorized copying and incentives to create would predict.

    It's important to include the authors' caveat about the importance of trademark law in this scheme. A genuine Prada purse confers more status than a Prada knock-off, so designers must protect their trademarks aggressively, even if they don't protect the designs to which those marks are attached.

    Anchoring

    The second phenomenon that Raustiala and Sprigman identify at the root of the fashion industry's low-IP success is what they call anchoring. Anchoring describes the process by which the industry converges on a few major design themes, or trends, during a fashion season—whether skirts are fitted or flowing, or cuffs are wide or slim, and so on. Anchoring is also the mechanism by which the fashion industry signals to consumers that trends have changed, and it's time to update the wardrobe.


    While the industry produces a wide variety of designs at any one time, readily discernible trends nonetheless emerge and come to define a particular season's style. These trends evolve through an undirected process of copying, referencing, receiving input from consultants, testing design themes via observation of rivals' designs at runway shows, communication with buyers for key retailers, and coverage and commentary in the press.

    Copying helps to anchor the new season to a limited number of design themes, which are freely workable by all firms in the industry within the low-IP equilibrium. A regime of free appropriation helps emergent themes become full-blown trends; trendy consumers follow suit. Anchoring thus encourages consumption by conveying to consumers important information about the season's dominant styles: suits are slim, or roomy; skirts are tweedy, or bohemian; the hot handbag is small, rectangular, and made of white-stitched black leather, and so forth. Thus anchoring helps fashion-conscious consumers understand (1) when the mode has shifted, (2) what defines the new mode, and (3) what to buy to remain within it.


    So unrestrained copying not only drives the production of new designs by making older designs obsolete, but it also helps shape the new designs around themes so that consumers can easily identify what looks are "in" or "out" at the moment

    What does this mean for Big Content's crusade against peer-to-peer copying?

    Probably not much, at least in the near term. The two phenomena identified above are at the very least peculiar to markets involving "positional goods," and may well be peculiar to the fashion industry in particular. The models developed in the paper aren't really that generalizable to other IP regimes, and the authors acknowledge as much.

    Nonetheless, the paper may be a good first step in moving beyond traditional, blanket assumptions about the relationship between copying and innovation, and it may spur legal scholars to develop more detailed models of intellectual property that fit specific industries. The paper also suggests that when technological and market conditions change dramatically, as they have in the wake of the P2P revolution, the relationship between unauthorized copying and incentives to create may change dramatically as well.

  • #2
    Yeah, but look at all the crap that comes out as fashion. I went to a fashion show at Yale recently where this designer basically mangled men's clothes and put them on women and called it a dress. People actually took this seriously. I'm sorry, but wearing a dress shirt inside out is not haute couture, no matter how many ribbons you put on it.
    “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
    "Capitalism ho!"

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    • #3
      clothes also degrade over time
      "I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
      'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger

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      • #4
        CDs go bad..

        JM
        Jon Miller-
        I AM.CANADIAN
        GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Jon Miller
          CDs go bad..

          JM
          but the music is forever! big lapels? in this day and age though thats different.

          also the means of production arent easily replicatable by the end user and money still winds up in the pockets of some people who work for companies.
          "I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
          'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger

          Comment


          • #6
            also a product in fashion is usually priced according to its quality, raririty, etc etc, whereas music and videos have a standardize price in spite of quality
            "I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
            'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by DaShi
              Yeah, but look at all the crap that comes out as fashion. I went to a fashion show at Yale recently where this designer basically mangled men's clothes and put them on women and called it a dress. People actually took this seriously. I'm sorry, but wearing a dress shirt inside out is not haute couture, no matter how many ribbons you put on it.
              It is if some haute couturist says so.

              As well as it is called art if a famous artist places puts a plate of spaghetti on a canvas,
              but is called a mess if any ordinary person does so
              Tamsin (Lost Girl): "I am the Harbinger of Death. I arrive on winds of blessed air. Air that you no longer deserve."
              Tamsin (Lost Girl): "He has fallen in battle and I must take him to the Einherjar in Valhalla"

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              • #8
                Originally posted by MRT144
                clothes also degrade over time
                So do human corpses...such a letdown...
                Speaking of Erith:

                "It's not twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham" - Linda Smith

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by MRT144
                  also a product in fashion is usually priced according to its quality, raririty, etc etc,


                  You are kidding, right? They are usually priced to take into account some silly label
                  Speaking of Erith:

                  "It's not twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham" - Linda Smith

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Provost Harrison




                    You are kidding, right? They are usually priced to take into account some silly label
                    priced according to quality, rarity, etc etc. you must wear burlap sacks every day. your ignorance of clothes and the reason people buy them and sell them is profound. you think its all some game to keep you out so you resign yourself to outsider status and try and mock what youll never have. a sense of style.

                    the price of clothing can be caused by a designer to create rarity and designer status, it can also be reduced to create more reach. the point is, the pricing in clothing isnt standardized to any one set thing like media is.
                    "I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
                    'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      On a label. Clothes are not rare.
                      Speaking of Erith:

                      "It's not twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham" - Linda Smith

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Provost Harrison
                        On a label. Clothes are not rare.
                        sure they are. specific articles of clothing are rare, and are as such by supplier shorts, or pricing that cause lack of mass appeal to buy them.
                        "I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
                        'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Well surely it is best to avoid what the fool goes for to avoid excessive pricing?
                          Speaking of Erith:

                          "It's not twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Dagenham" - Linda Smith

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            unless that excessive pricing actually nets you something...which it may or may not. i take it you dont eat well either since the difference between a choice steak and ground beef is a decision where the fool chooses a steak.
                            "I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
                            'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              again this is where the consumers perception of value and their own tastes reflects what the producer is willing to price. in media creation the price is standardized unhinged to taste or preference. all CDs usually cost the same, all DVDs usually cost the same.

                              all sweaters do not. all jackets do not. all purses do not. their prices reflect different tastes, different producer goals (exclusitivity with low sales at high prices, low prices with high sales), and different manufacturing etc etc
                              Last edited by MRT144; November 26, 2006, 06:55.
                              "I hope I get to punch you in the face one day" - MRT144, Imran Siddiqui
                              'I'm fairly certain that a ban on me punching you in the face is not a "right" worth respecting." - loinburger

                              Comment

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