Johanna Blakley speaks about Intellectual Property in the Fashion Industry. Fashion, as we learned in class, is a utilitarian object and therefore cannot be patented. She begins with an anecdote of how someone can go into a store and find an article of clothing from decades ago that can be used in the current fashion sense. She says this can also be described as fashion genius. Fashion is not simply about selling old products, it's about selling specific products from an older era during a new era. Finding that fit is left to the fashionistas of the world, and that's where the uniqueness or novelty comes.
In the fashion industry this is not illegal. There is trademark protection, but no copyright or patent infringement.
She argues that because there is no copyright laws fashion designers have been an "open and creative ecology for production". In other countries there is protection for the fashion industry, however she states the laws are not very affective. For example Japan has a very high novelty standard whereas the European Union has quite low novelty standards. She states either ways this is does not prevent copying designed and recycling of ideas.
There are also other industries that don’t have copyright laws such as the food industry, automobile design, furniture, magic tricks, databases, and even open source software.
I found it interesting that some fields thrive on the concept of sharing and reusing and without that ability they would probably fail.
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