Fashion designs in the United States are widely unprotected by intellectual property rights. Knockoff designers often recreate the couture creations of major design houses without paying royalties and without the labor involved in imagining the high-end fashion designs. Though recently multiple bills have been introduced into Congress that would grant three years of protection for the actual designs, many argue that this protection is actually damaging to the industry that thrives on competitive creativity. On the one hand, no protective measures for fashion design would be extensive enough to completely prohibit design piracy. The damage caused by a fashion copyright law would far outweigh any possible benefits for the fashion industry and all other industries with intellectual property.

This article is extremely useful as evidence for my thesis in that it provides both support and opposition for the fashion copyright argument, concluding that protection of something as abstract as a fashion design would ultimately be detrimental. The article extends the same reasoning to other industries that also do not have intellectual property protection, concluding that applying copyright law to one industry would inhibit creativity in other industries as well, which adds an extra layer of depth to the argument that supports my overarching thesis.