From March 29th to April 1st, 2018, divided into 12 sections in 4 days, the Mode Talk which gathers elites from the whole industry will continue to be held at the same time and place with the Mode Exhibition. This time, Mode Talk focuses on hot topics related to fashion design and intellectual property.
At 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., April 1st, 2018, Prof. Yao Huanqing, Secretary General of Beijing Sunshine Intellectual Property and Legal Development Foundation (SSIP) and Associate Professor of Renmin University of China School of Law and Academy of IP, Zuo Yuguo, Partner of Lawjay Partner, Roderic Wong, founder/designer and technical director of RODERICWONG brand, and Rina Tam, brand designer and operation director of RODERICWONG, shared their views and thoughts on the topic of “Intellectual Property Protection in the Fashion Industry”.
Roderic Wong, founder/designer of RODERICWONG brand and Rina Tam, technical director and brand designer and operations director, talked about the current status of copyright protection in China's fashion design industry and the problems encountered in the process of designer rights protection from the designer's point of view. And in their opinions, the difficulty in copyright protection for fashion design was that the cost of protection is too high, but the cost of infringement is very low. That’s because the life circle of the fashion industry was too short that many designers thought that, instead of wasting time to protect their rights, it was wiser to design new works. However, the two designers also deeply understand that in order to build a strong brand in the fashion industry, providing good products is not enough. Branding building relies on IP, and IP should be protected. Thus, it is necessary to strengthen the awareness of IP protection.
Prof. Yao Huanqing, Secretary-general of SSIP and Associate Professor of Academy of IP RUC, believed that in order to improve the IP protection of fashion industry, the most important thing to do is to raise the public awareness of the right holders to enforce their IP rights. The existing legal system is good enough for the protection of IP rights. We also provide punitive compansation in IP laws. Right holders need to have the awareness to enforce their rights, to cooperate with each other in the process of enforcing IP rights, and to make good use of big data analysis, so that they can increase the efficiency and efficacy of IP rights enforcement and to build a good order for copyright protection in fashion industry. At the same time, we need to note the balance between the protection provided by copyright and design patent and make good use of copyright registration, trademark protection and design patent protection, so that we could provide comprehensive and full protection to design and brands.
Zuo Yuguo, Partner of Lawjay Partners, believed that intellectual property rights protection had gone through three stages. In the first stage, right holders usually won the lawsuit but lost their money. In the second stage, right holders usually won the lawsuit and no longer lost their money. Then it was moving to the third stage. When obtained evidence successful, the lawsuit would win and the money can be won, too. This showed that the current legal system and judicial environment were constantly improving. Therefore, right holders should have confidence in the current legal system when their IP rights are infringed, and actively use the current legal system, such as trade secret protection and anti-counterfeiting to protect their legal rights.
SSIP cooperated with the Fashion Week Organizing Committee to provide support for the intellectual property section for the first time. The Fashion Week Organizing Committee also attached great importance to the cooperation with SSIP and spoke highly of it. The Committee said that this was the first time for the Fashion Week to have a topic on Intellectual Property Protection in the Fashion Industry. It not only provides a new perspective for the industry, but also enables designers to have a deeper understanding of IP protection for their own interests. With the improvement of IP protection in China and the wake of public awareness of IP, this topic is very beneficial and necessary to the healthy development of the fashion industry. Therefore, the Fashion Week Organizing Committee hopes to conduct more in-depth discussions on more specific issues in the future, and looks forward to maintaining long-term cooperation with SSIP in the future, and hopes that SSIP can support such activities for a long time. SSIP will continue to provide support for the development of the intellectual property industry.
微信公众号：北京阳光知识产权基金会
Copyright: The Beijing Sunshine Intellectual Property and Legal Development Foundation