Fashion Design Case Study

Introduction

In the Fashion, Design and Luxury world, the protection of the intellectual property, especially brands, logos, and trade dresses are of the highest importance. This topic is regularly discussed in the daily life of business in this sector, and is unfortunately usually a source of problems or at least, of risks that need to be addressed. Since we plan to work in the fashion industry, it is of utmost importance to know and be aware about these issues.

How would you feel if you were a designer and you just launch your brand and suddenly find out that someone is using your design and even accuse you of copying it? You would feel bad and, if the case is going to the court, you would have to pay a lot of money to fight against this and secondly, if you don’t have any protection of your design, you would lose at the court and not be allowed to use your design anymore. What a loss. Big companies are always taking this risk very seriously and register every single design to get protection. Registering your design is the best and only way to mitigate this risk and prevent someone from copying your design.

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For example, we can think about the iconic jewelry blue box that directly refers in our mind to Tiffany brand, or the orange box which makes us directly notice a product from Hermès. These are some examples of colored boxes registered as a Trade Dress. Another example for trade dress design is the Chanel number 5 bottle: once we see it we know that it is a Chanel number 5 bottle even if one hides the name of the bottle. The Coca Cola bottle is also a good example for trade dress design protection. The red and yellow color of Kodak logo is also a sample of trade dress color protection. Even the shape of a building can be covered by the Trade Dress concept: for example, the shape of the Empire State Building in New York. All these examples clearly fulfill the three requirements to be recognized as a Trade