the limitations of traditional intellectual property rights protection for fashion designs

intellectual property law is premised traditionally on the protection of inventions (patent), literary and artistic property (copyright), and signs (trade mark); and sui generis rights, such as design law, stand outside this framework and are constantly questioned and re-shaped the fashion industry is an intellectual property (ip) intensive industry, continually generating and commercially exploiting creative ideas and innovations, but the question of whether fashion designers can protect their works under the intellectual property laws of their country is hotly debated. unlike the industries like music, film, video game, and book publishing, the fashion industry’s principal creative element— its apparel designs— doesn’t protect by traditional ipr completely and hence it’s created a sui generis ipr for protection of designers.