Fashion & IPR: Protect what you create
Imagine designing a tote bag so iconic, it becomes your brand’s signature piece. You’ve poured in your time, energy, creativity, and effort. A few weeks later, you walk past a local street shop and see the same tote selling for a fraction of your price. It looks like your Totes until you touch it. The material is cheaper, the finish is poor, and yet it replicates your idea.
That isn’t just frustrating. It’s your intellectual property at risk!
By 2025, the value of the apparel global market is expected to have reached almost USD 2.25 trillion. As the fashion business continues to grow to become one of the largest businesses in the world, the need to protect it becomes paramount. On one end, we see the tremendous growth in the industry, but on the other end, counterfeiting, dupes, and infringements have also increased resulting in commercial and goodwill losses to the brands.
Then the essential question arises: How do we save our products and designs from Intellectual Property (IP) theft? The answer is: Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and IP laws.
What is Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)?
Intellectual property is a class of property that includes intangible creations of human intellect. IPR is the set of rules that protects one’s intellectual property created by human intelligence and creativity. It includes copyright, trademark, trade secret, patent, designs, and many other rights. The fashion industry at its core is creativity and innovation which is the essence of intellectual property.
In India, the fashion industry is regulated by laws that include trademark, copyright, patents, designs, trade secret, counterfeit, knockoffs, advertising and marketing. In simple words, IPR works as a shield that keeps creativity from being stolen or misused. Here is how some of them work in practice:
Copyright protects original sketches, textile prints, and artistic elements. If you draw it or create the pattern, copyright guards it.
Trademarks cover brand identifiers like your name, your logo, even a signature colour or detail (think of Chanel’s double C or Louboutin’s red sole).
Design Rights secure the shape, cut, or overall aesthetic of your product which is unique and was not available in public before.
Patents protect unique inventions and innovations like new fabrics, stitching techniques, or even 3D-printed shoes. It even protects unique processes to make such products.
The fashion industry will truly flourish only if creators and inventors are granted protection for their work safeguarded from counterfeits.
Why do we need IPR in fashion industry
We need IPR, because without it originality and creativity doesn’t survive.
For designers and brands, IPR ensures that the hours, ideas, and risks invested in a collection are not hijacked overnight by someone who did none of the work. Without protection and due diligence originality may become a liability rather than an asset.
For consumers, IPR draws the line between authentic and counterfeit. A knock-off may look the same at first glance, but it often comes with lower quality, no accountability, and, in some cases, safety risks.
For the fashion industry as a whole, IPR maintains fairness. If copying is unchecked, innovation slows down, trends collapse into repetition, and the incentive to create something new disappears.
Louboutin vs YSL: The Red Sole Case
One of the most iconic saga in fashion was a legal battle fought over something as simple and as powerful as a colour.
Christian Louboutin’s shoes have always been well known and recognizable for their bright lacquer red bottom outsoles. It became the signature outsole and thus was registered as a trademark.
Further in 2011, Yves Saint Laurent (YSL) released an all-red shoe, including a red sole. Louboutin claimed this infringed his trademark. The court disagreed in part. It ruled that Louboutin’s trademark was valid, but only when the red sole contrasted with the rest of the shoe. Since YSL’s design was entirely red, it did not violate the trademark.
This case set an important precedent: trademarks in fashion can protect even small details, but they have limits. A colour can be owned but context matters.
Closing thoughts
The story of that tote bag isn’t rare. It’s the everyday reality of fashion. What begins as your signature creation can easily end up diluted in piles of cheap copies. IPR is the difference between watching it slip away and holding on to what you built.
For every designer, brand, and innovator, IPR is not a luxury, it is a necessity. If fashion is to flourish as a business and as an art form, it needs the law as much as it needs creativity.
1. STATISTA, https://www.statista.com/outlook/cmo/apparel/worldwide?currency=USD, (last visited, Sept. 16, 2025)
2. Tanya Kumari, Dr. Harshita Singh, The impact of intellectual property rights in the fashion industry, 4, IJIRL, 1124, 1125 (2024)
3. Christian Louboutin S.A. v. Yves Saint Laurent Am. Holding, Inc No, 11- 3303 (2d Cir. 2012)
