Protecting IP Rights of Designers of Products in the Fashion Industry — Clothing, Shoes and Accessories in International Trade: EU, UK and USA Experience

The purpose of the present work is to analyze the international treaties, legislation of foreign countries, relevant judicial precedents, theoretical and practical problems in the field of legal protection of clothing design. In recent years numbers of litigations and identified cases of violation of intellectual property rights of designers are growing and fashion as a phenomenon is becoming increasingly important from an economic point of view; the development of the Internet and cheap labor in developing countries, the process of copying is significantly simplified. Thus, the present study can be considered as topical. Moreover, the relevance of the present paper can be indicated in the context of the Russian market of fashion products. In recent years the Russian fashion industry has been actively developing, which due to the development of the Russian economic system in the context of economic sanctions. In the course of the study, several requirements that must be met by relevant legal mechanisms to ensure effective protection of clothing design are identified, namely: legal protection of design should be provided in a short time, since the relevance of the object of protection is short in the presence of a high risk of copying; legal mechanisms should provide protection of design in cases where its copy creates a similar overall impression on the consumer, and not only in cases of full and obvious copying. Copyright and patent mechanisms meet these requirements only separately, which does not meet the requirements of efficiency. In this regard, the EU has created a unique Institute of unregistered industrial design. Taking the necessary features of copyright and patent law, this Institute fully complies with the abovementioned requirements. It is concluded that the Institute of unregistered industrial design today is the most effective way of legal protection of design of clothes, shoes and accessories.