Tim Gunn Does DC To Lobby for the New Design Piracy Prohibition Act

Tim Gunn and Project Runway Season 5 winner Leanne Marshall made a trip out to Washington in order to rally support for the reintroduced Design Piracy Prohibition Act which was brought back to life last month.

As I have blogged about the previous incarnation of the Act, it would serve to provide copyright protection to designers for their creative works. Currently, there is no such legal protection for designers except for blatant infringement of trademarks.

The current proposed Act would provide designers copyright protection for three years. Designers would be able to apply for protection by submitting a sketch or photo of their design via mail or email. This would register their design. It would cost designers $30 to register their works.

Mr. Steven Kolb who is the executive director of the Council of Fashion Designers of America was also in Washington DC to lobby for the passage of this legislation. He plans on coming back to Washington DC next week with designers Tracy Reese and Francisco Costa.

LV Has No Love for Google

Google gets no love from the luxury retailer Louis Vuitton. It took the world's largest search engine to court in Paris back in 2003. Louis Vuitton claims that Google was infringing on its trademark rights when it sold certain sponsored links with key search words such as "vuitton". Louis Vuitton claims that Google does not have the right to sell trademark protected names to advertisers when those trademark protected words are used in a key word search.

Google appealed a Parisian high court decision in favor of Louis Vuitton this past Tuesday in the highest EU Court. Here is an excerpt from Business Report:

"'Google makes money not by reason of the nature of the keyword but by someone clicking on the keyword,' Google lawyer Alexandra Neri told a 15-judge panel of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

The case is the EU tribunal's first on whether companies in the 27-nation region can block search engines from using trademarked brand names to trigger search results. Internet ads tied to search results generate most of Google's revenue."

The outcome of this case is expected to be announced in 2010. It is considered to be a pivotal case for the new expanding area of e-commerce.

Does Counterfeiting Create "Bad Seeds"?

It seems that on top of all of the other evils that counterfeiting produces, it also creates a tendency among its consumers to be less moral. According to a blog written by the New York Times, a study has been done about the moral implications of counterfeit consumption. The study found that individuals who were told that they were wearing counterfeit sunglasses were more likely to cheat on tests than individuals who were told that they were wearing real sunglasses.

From NYT post:

“The effect on morality, people don’t anticipate,” said Prof. Dan Ariely, the author of “Predictably Irrational,” who conducted the studies. “We asked them if wearing fakes would get people to cheat more, they didn’t think it has an effect.”

It seems that most consumers do not even realize the impact of their choices, but there is a subconscious effect. Consumers tend to cheat more when they realize that their peers are cheating. Consumers also tend to purchase more counterfeits when they realize their peers are doing it as well.

This study also asked consumers how authentic they would feel with one, two or three counterfeit items. The researchers found that once the consumer wore at least one counterfeit item, it was easier to wear two or three. This indicates that once a consumer starts to wear counterfeit items, it is easier to keep buying counterfeits than if they never started at all.

To read more about this study, the moral effects of counterfeits, and the impact of branding, check out the NYT post here:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/the-moral-costs-of-counterfeiting/

Glaceau VitaminWater Boasts of IP Success

Glaceau Vitamin Water has taken the time to write a very interesting piece about the efforts of its in house legal department in order to protect Glaceau's intellectual property rights (trademark rights in particular). The company has a small legal department that is comprised of general corporate counsel Mr. Joseph DiSalvo, associate general counsel Brian Howard, part time IP attorney and a paralegal on staff.

The piece highlights something that seems to be very important in this ever competitive economy: Intellectual property rights are everything right now:

"There's nothing more important to this company than its intellectual property," says general counsel Joseph DiSalvo. "Nothing." This is something that Coca Cola Inc. has to think about (see previous post). Apparently the devotees of sham glam will tell you that IP rights are not necessarily important.

I agree with Mr. DiSalvo. If you look at one of the leading competitors for the vitamin enhanced water sector (SoBe's Life Water which is owned by Pepsi Co), it definitely looks like Glaceau has a reason to litigate for trademark infringement, trade dress, and also trademark dilution. Hence the three different incarnations. The first bottle by SoBe was found to infringe on Glaceau's trademark, the second bottle was too confusing (and still contained contrasting color fonts with the words Life/Water which was too similar to Glaceau's Vitamin Water), and the third is the final incarnation. Can you say sham glam?

You can read the entire article (which I feel sounds like a press release) here:

http://www.law.com/jsp/ihc/PubArticleIHC.jsp?id=1202428379193&pos=ataglance

New Term of the Weak: Sham Glam?

After reading an article posted by Reuters, I was introduced to a new term called "sham glam". This term has been introduced by Chinese consumers who say that they are over the brand name/luxury market. They are proud embracers of "sham glam". "Sham glam" is used to describe a consumer who uses fake products for their own kitchsy appeal. Another term to watch for is "shanzai".

Well I guess if you don't mind "sham glam", then you would not mind drinking soda from these bottles which are eerily familiar to Fanta, Coca Cola and Sprite which are all part of the Coca Cola Inc umbrella. Would you drink a bottle of Smile? Sham glam devotees would say yes!

Chinese consumers are saying that as the recession affects more and more of them, they are unable to afford the price points of popular brand name products. While many of the sham glam devotees are aware of the original products that may have inspired their sham glam brands, this is not a case of branding confusion: "It's an imitation, so it's not a fake and it's not infringing copyright. Maybe it lacks innovation but it's not really bad," said Beijing student Cui Lai.

How do foreign companies feel about their intellectual property rights possibly being violated by sham glam copiers? "The United States and European Union have expressed their displeasure with Beijing numerous times over the problem, and it has proven a major irritant in trade and political ties.China says it is trying hard to tackle piracy, but that as it is a developing country it may take many years to root out the problem.

Yet the growing popularity of "shanzhai" products in China could prove an extra headache for the original and mostly foreign brands already struggling to enforce their intellectual property in the world's third-largest economy.

"It is possible that these lookalikes, these sort of brand upstarts, can actually become quite famous locally and then the case would be considerably more difficult," said Scott Palmer of Baker & McKenzie, who specializes in anti-piracy law in China."

You can read the whole Reuters article about sham glam here: http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE5151FW20090206?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Giorgio Armani Weighs in On Counterfeits

Time Magazine collected ten questions from readers around the world to ask the designer Giorgio Armani.

Of the ten questions asked, two of them dealt with Intellectual Property rights:

Q: Does the Armani brand suffer a lot of damage because of counterfeit products? David Remenyik, BUDAPEST

A: Personally, I think counterfeit products are good because their existence shows that we create something people want to copy. Professionally, it causes big problems because it creates products with your name on them that are not controlled by you.

Q: You recently accused Dolce & Gabbana of copying one of your designs. Do you plan to pursue this claim in court? Alice Goodman, SYDNEY

A: No. This happened at the end of a small press conference. One of my colleagues brought me a photo of this pair of pants. I said, very nonchalantly, "Look--great designers like Dolce & Gabbana copy us!" I was joking, it was not serious, but naturally the press picked up on it and splashed it all over the headlines.

If you would like to read all ten questions and Mr. Armani's answers you can find the whole interview here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1879189,00.html

If you are interested in the pants (and the story) referenced in question #2 in this post, check it out here: http://www.gaywired.com/Article.cfm?ID=21382 Dolce and Gabbana had some fighting words which included this quote about copying from Picasso: "As Picasso used to say, copying from others is inevitable, but copying from oneself leads to sterility," they said.

Ouch.

Harper's Bazaar Tells the Recessionista: Fakes Are Never In Fashion

WABC-NY posted an interesting piece about the rise in counterfeit bag sales in New York City. I guess my previous hypothesis that there will be a decline in fake handbag sales was wrong. It seems that as the economy continues to flounder, more women are interested in buying a counterfeit purse than ever.

Valerie Salembier of Harper's Bazaar contributed to the segment. She said she hoped that her readers understood the negative consequences of purchasing counterfeit fashion items: "Our readers should know that if they buy a counterfeit anything, their money is going to bad purposes."

Check out the segment here:

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local&id=6641161