Design Piracy

1396 Words3 Pages

In 2008 alone, the total of all seizures and pirated goods totaled close to $273 million in the United States. Fashion products including handbags, watches, clothing, and textiles make up a large share of the international smuggling traffic. The issue of design piracy dates back to the depression when disputes started between New York and Paris. During the Great Depression, counterfeiters of the newest styles posed a challenge to the high-fashion designers who dominated Parisian design. Meanwhile, New York was becoming a real competitor for the role of fashion capital. Design Piracy effectively allows others to plagiarize the original designers creative ideas and capitalize on the benefits. Design piracy between New York and Paris during the interwar years occurred because no laws had yet to prohibit piracy, New York was starting to become a fashion icon city, and the argument of weather designs should be protected.
One of the factors that played into the design piracy between Paris and New York was the problem that no laws had yet to be created to prohibit piracy in the fashion industry. Although there had been many attempted bills passed through congress none of them had succeeded. However, this did not stop the designers from fighting every last person that was stealing their design ideas. For example, the French Association Protection artistique des industries saisonnieres, founded by Vionnet and her lawyer, Armand Trouyet, sued every copier they could find. Designers took it very personal when they saw their copied designs being sold in black markets and causing a decrease in the face value of their actual products. In New York, the Fashion Originators Guild of America, founded by Renter and his lawyer Sylvan Gotshal, ga...

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