Clothing and copyright

Last month, I gave a talk in San Antonio about intellectual property. One of the questions asked after (Hi, Sara!) was about copyright and clothing design, at which point I opined that the elements of clothing would be difficult to patent, and it's the entire design that would be subject to legal protection (witness all the Steve Madden lawsuits). And here we have a push for new legislation! They are asking for 3 years of protection, interestingly enough.

Personally, I doubt it would have very much monetary effect -- after all, it's not like if there're no knock-offs, we'll all be shopping at Chanel. But the legalities will be amusing, I hope.