Marques 2018: Swarovski and Chanel reveal fashion IP difficulties
Fashion designs which are extremely successful are often very simple, making them very difficult to protect with IP, according to Lynn Christina Schreier, head of consumer goods, business IP at Swarovski.
Schreier described the day-to-day challenges of an in-house lawyer at a fashion brand during the 2018 Marques Annual Conference in Paris on Friday, September 21.
She explained that one of Swarovski’s more recent products, the Stardust bracelet, was incredibly popular, but as a mesh tube filled with crystals, it was also an extremely simple design.
Schreier said that one way to tackle such challenges is to focus on unique elements of the design that may well be eligible for protection. In this case, the “puzzle piece lock” of the Stardust bracelet was new and unique, even if the crystal-filled mesh tube was not.
Another major challenge for fashion in-house counsel is the number of industry players. Schreier explained that an assessment of what can be realistically protected, and how broad that scope of protection can be, must be conducted in relation to product designs.
Also, in such a fast-moving industry, product cycles leave little time for design clearance and protection, Schreier said. For example, Swarovski may have hundreds of products to launch each season with just two or three months to get design clearance.
“Being able to obtain registration and have it upon product launch is often impossible due to time pressures,” Schreier explained.
Jennifer Pickett, global head of trademark protection at Chanel, noted that fashion shows are very last-minute. She said that the key designs being showcased at an event may be revealed internally only a couple of days before.
In Pickett’s experience, design rights are “not as robust” as trademarks, and the number of countries that subscribe to the Hague System for designs (69) is not as large as that for the Madrid System for trademarks (117).
Even so, she said, Chanel files a “huge” number of designs every year, and the brand relies on “the whole range of rights and remedies” to protect its products.
Also on the panel were Arianna Lacomelli, IP counsel at Furla; Constance Laennec-Cuny, senior IP counsel at Maus Frères; William Lobelson, partner at Germain Maureau; and Moïra Truijens, counsel at Hoogenraad & Haak.
The 2018 Marques Annual Conference took place in Paris between September 18 and September 21.
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