Should Congress Extend Copyright Protection to Fashion Designs?

While this blog focuses primarily on writing and writers, I do take an occasional frolic and detour into the public policies underlying copyright and copyright's effect on creative artists in other fields.  In this regard, you may have read that Senator Schumer and others have introduced legislation that would provide a new three-year term of copyright protection to fashion designs.  The text of the bill, known as the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act, is reproduced here.  The Judiciary Committee unanimously approved the bill earlier this month.

Clothing designs have never before been the subject of copyright protection in the United States (although fabric prints -- of sufficient originality -- can be).  A few years ago, Tyler Cowen, the always-interesting economics blogger, ran a fascinating post on how the fashion industry works without copyright and and wondered aloud "why the absence of IP protection has led to (apparently) acceptable results." Worth revisiting in light of the proposed new law.

And here is an informative article on the history of the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act (from Louis Ederer and Maxwell Preston).