RISS 검색 - 국내학술지논문 상세보기

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다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The fashion industry is one of the biggest creative industries in the world The Korean fashion industry is bigger than all three major contents industries (books, movies and music) combined. With the development particularly of digital and internet technologies, content producing industries mount vocal campaigns to strengthen the legal protection of the creative content by providing stronger intellectual property laws and more strict enforcement as well as harsher penalties to protect creative content, to deter illegal copying and exploitation and to punish offenders. Similar advocacy has been made with regard to the fashion industry that calls for better legal protection of fashion designs arguing that the existing legal protection under design right and copyright is inadequate and a mechanism that provides stronger protection with little formal requirements for shorter duration is needed. However, there is little empirical evidence that fashion industry needs stronger legal protection to thrive. In fact, given the nature of fashion industry that depends on a trend being created for the masses to follow, copying is an essential element of the fashion industry and stronger legal protection of fashion designs could be detrimental to the business of fashion.
This paper explores the question of whether stronger intellectual protection is needed for the fashion industry in order for the industry to develop and grow. There is an implicit assumption that to foster the development of a creative industry, there must be strong protection of intellectual creations but this argument may not necessarily hold true particularly in relation to the fashion industry. Without empirical evidence that show a clear cost-benefit analysis of stronger protection, policymakers would do well to approach any changes to the existing regime of fashion design protection with caution.