U.S. Senators Introduce Bill to Nail Design Thiefs

Not so fast, "fast" fashion – if a new design piracy bill that U.S. senators just introduced passes, companies hawking copies of an original design registered by a designer with the U.S. Copyright Office may find themselves dealing with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Senators Charles Schumer (D-NY), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and Olympia Snowe (R-ME) introduced the bill in Washington D.C. last Thursday, August 2.

Under the bill, called the Design Piracy Prohibition Act, designers would be protected for a period of up to three years against piracy. A similar bill was presented in the House of Representatives in April by Representatives Delahunt, Goodlatte, Maloney and Bono.

Such intellectual property protection is common in Europe for designers, and just recently the label Chloe successfully sued UK retailer Topshop for producing a near-identical yellow romper. But in the U.S., current laws namely deal with counterfeit goods (those infringing on a registered trademark that purports to be authentic) but doesn't protect the designers' ideas.

Narciso Rodriguez, Marc Bouwer, Nicole Miller, Jeffrey Banks, Yeohlee Tang, Richard Lambertson of Lamberston Truex and Dana Foley of Foley and Corrina were among the American designers present at a press conference today hosted by Senator Schumer at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York in support of the bill.

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