Tania Phipps-Rufus

PhD candidate
University of Bristol

Tania Phipps-Rufus is an AHRC funded PhD candidate at the University of Bristol, conducting her PhD on fashion, culture and intellectual property in the creative economy. Tania read law at the University of Kent, Canterbury, and obtained her Master of Laws degree in Intellectual Property from the University of London, Queen Mary. She is currently a visiting lecturer at Istituto Marangoni, where she teaches on the MA in fashion promotion and the MA in luxury brand management. Prior to this she was a visiting lecturer of law at the University of Hertfordshire where she taught the LL.M Masters of Law programme in Intellectual Property. Tania is also the founder and editor-in-chief of Fashion, Law & Business, an initiative connecting industry to the commercial and legal topics that affect the fashion industry.

Abstract

Fashion, Intellectual Property and Culture in the Creative Economy 

Fashion is part of a broader system of culture, and many designers draw from the past, present and future to produce their designs. Yet this often poses a problem for the law. As such, this contribution also looks at the creative process of fashion in order to ask questions pertaining to intellectual properties place in the fashion design industry.

This talk will discuss intellectual property and its relationship to the management, protection and exploitation of fashion creativity.  Fashion as a cultural industry is concerned not only with the production of fashion items, but also with the creation and exploitation of the meanings embedded in fashion goods. This contribution looks at the properties of the cultural system of fashion and considers the structuring processes (of IP) through which it is constructed. The research hypothesizes that intellectual property law shapes the creative and business activities of designers in the cultural industry of fashion. Intellectual property law offers designers legal protection through a series of rights, which allows for commercial exploitation, which designers can make revenue from in the form of licensing agreements, design rights that prevent them from being copied, and trademark rights, which help them, build their identity in the market place as a brand.

However, fashion is part of a broader system of culture, and many designers draw from the past, present and future to produce their designs. Yet this often poses a problem for the law. As such, this contribution also looks at the creative process of fashion in order to ask questions pertaining to intellectual properties place in the fashion design industry. It draws on visual methods as evidence to reveal the tension between fashion & the law and to also elaborate on the legal implications of creative processes, such as inspiration, homage, and copying in fashion & design practice.