Fashionably Legal: Fashion and Intellectual Property

This course will provide an overview of fashion law and how it intersects with intellectual property. The course will touch on more commonly known areas of fashion including apparel, shoes, and accessories. This course also will address how fashion is going beyond just the clothes or the accessories themselves and now reaching more into technology including supply chain optimization, virtual fitting rooms, and wardrobe recommendations using artificial intelligence (AI).

Learning Objectives: 

1. Provide an overview of fashion and how it intersects with intellectual property
2. Identify what aspects of fashion may be protectable through trademarks and how courts have evaluated trademark infringement in the fashion context
3. Review how copyrights may be obtained in the fashion context and how the U.S. Supreme Court has addressed
4. Examine what aspects of fashion may be protectable through patents
5. Discuss how more than one form of intellectual property can be raised in a fashion context
6. Highlight what is coming in the future of fashion and how intellectual property may be implicated