Fashion has become an important carrier of aesthetics in the eyes of modern people and fashion design has also become an important factor affecting the development of the fashion industry. With the increasing problems of intellectual property infringement of fashion design, it has correspondingly become an important topic as how to protect the Intellectual Property rights of fashion design. There are generally four paths of Intellectual Property protection for fashion designs: Copyright, Design Patent Right, Trademark Right and Anti-Unfair Competition Law Protection. The path of protecting copyright of fashion designs is the most comprehensive, but it has higher requirements for originality and aesthetics of fashion designs. The condition for protection by Design Patents is that the aesthetic nature of the fashion design shall be distinguished from the fashion functionality. The condition for protection under Trademark Law is that the achievement of distinctiveness in fashion design. The conditions for protection under the law against Unfair Competition are that the fashion product causes certain impact and that the fashion design leads to confusion; Each of the four protection paths has its own strengths and weaknesses. The fashion design in China is still in a mature stage of development, and a comprehensive protection path shall be adopted, which is characterized by the copyright protection as the main focus with the Design Patent Rights, Trademark Rights and Anti-Unfair Competition Law protection as complementary.

This paper is the phased research result of the National Social Science Fund Project titled “Copyright Authorization Mode in All-Media Era” (Project No: 19CXW040).

Authors and Affiliations

1. Nanjing University of Science and Technology, 200 Xiaolingwei, Nanjing, 210094, Jiangsu, China

   Jia Liu

2. Jiangsu Research Center for Intellectual Property Development, 200 Xiaolingwei, Nanjing, 210094, Jiangsu, China

   Jia Liu

3. Jiangsu Copyright Research Center, 200 Xiaolingwei, Nanjing, 210094, Jiangsu, China

   Jia Liu

4. Beijing City University, 269 Beisihuan Zhonglu, Beijing, 100083, China

   Wenjing Li

Corresponding author

Correspondence toJia Liu.

Editors and Affiliations

1. Hunan University, School of Design, Changsha, China

   Marcelo M. Soares

2. World Usability Day and Rabb School of Continuing Studies, Division of Graduate Professional Studies, Brandeis University, Newton Center, MA, USA

   Elizabeth Rosenzweig

3. Aaron Marcus and Associates, Berkeley, CA, USA

   Aaron Marcus

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