Fashion Piracy: New Trend in IPR

During social media scrolling, online reading, e-commerce exploration, or random internet surfing, one must have noticed certain advertisements that say “buy a GUCCI bag or Sabyasachi Mukherjee lehenga or Rado watch at giveaway prices”. And once the user clicks the link it is redirected to a third-party vendor website, which is a website not authorized to sell these products. Now the question arises from where they buy such products? The answer is that person has just indulged in online piracy. We are confused as to how clicking an advertisement and buying from the redirected website equates to indulging in piracy. For that, we need to understand what intellectual property (herein referred to as IP) is, basic Intellectual Property Rights (herein referred to as IPR) of fashion designers, and how online piracy works. And further, this blog will be discussing all these aspects in a detailed version.

IP is a category of property, including intangible creations, resulting from the application of mind or intellect to create something new or original. IPR is the set of laws and statutes that help a creator exploit their creation for material benefits while ensuring that the creation is protected from infringements and unauthorized use.

Fashion designing is an art form dedicated solely to the creation of clothing and lifestyle accessories. Designers use their creative ideas and visual images to produce novel garments. This industry is one of those industries that continuously generates, commercially exploits creative ideas and innovation. In this multi-billion dollar industry, creativity is not only limited to the act of designing, but also includes the production designs, ad campaign, production processes, and allied processes that make protection of such intellectual property all the more important. Due to these reasons, the fashion industry employs various IPR techniques mainly in the form of Trademark such as “Burberry” or Christian Louboutin’s red sole of shoes; Copyrights such as Rohit Bal’s collections or Designer von Furstenberg’s Copyrighted Print Pattern; patents such as Buck Weimer odour control of garments technology or CSIRO body temperature controlling technology in garments or Novozymes’ use of cellulase enzymes in the treatment of fabrics for the production of ‘stone washed’ denim jeans or Grindi Srl invention of Suberis fabric made of cork for the manufacture of clothing, footwear, and sportswear; trade secrets such as Shirtsdotnet proprietary software that provides mass customization clothing solutions or Zara’s information technology system that reduces the production cycle to 30 days and ensures that the finished items arrive in stores within 48 hours; designs such as Hermès classic “Kelly” Bag or classic Chanel suit designed by Coco Chanel; and Geographical Indications tags such as Uppada Jamdani Sarees of Andhra Pradesh or Bhagalpur The silk of Bihar or Kerala Kasavu or Kullu Shawl of Himachal Pradesh or Moirang Phee of Manipur for protecting their IP.

Piracy is a form of unauthorized use, distribution, or sale of material that leads to revenue losses and reputation tarnishing. These are hard things for the original creators to track and keep in control as people want to buy and use their product but are either unwilling or unable to pay the right sum of money for it. With the advent of the internet, the menace of piracy has grown manifold as now anyone can sell anything from anywhere and to anyone. Piracy is generally of 5 types: Counterfeiting, Internet Piracy, End-User Piracy, Client-Server Overuse, and Hard-Disk Loading.

Counterfeiting refers to the illegal reproduction, sale, and distribution of original copyrighted material. To make counterfeiting a success, one needs the right mix of 3 things:

●       Specifications and design of the original product

●       Someone who can know how to make the product one intends to counterfeit

●       Market to sell the counterfeit product

Bill Gates once said – “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business” and that is the case in today's interconnected online world. Nowadays having an online presence has become a necessity rather than a luxury as it helps businesses grow organically and serve a large customer base. When a business goes online, it lists its products and its specification and this acts as a raw material in the counterfeiting process.

An open secret that everyone knows in India, is that in any Indian city one can find a place where there exist artisans that can replicate any design given to them within days. So this fulfills the second requirement.

The last requirement of the market is fulfilled by the internet itself. The reach of a single website listing counterfeit products is more than what can be achieved by selling the same thing offline places such as Delhi’s Chandini Chowk, or Mumbai’s Linking Road. The reach of Amazon is more than 1.2 billion people spreading across 58 countries. This is just one website. One cannot possibly imagine the market that the online world has created. Internet apart from providing market allows provided the blanket on anonymity and that is the reason that even after the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon has thousands of banned, unsafe, mislabelled, and counterfeited products among its listing or Nike announcing that it is pulling out Amazon such products are still present.

Now you know how your single click made you a victim of internet piracy, wronged a fashion designer, and ultimately led to the loss of personal as well as societal economic gain.

By: Sanchit Seth 

(Legal Intern, WCSF)

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