Slate.com tells us that the fashion world is looking to make designs a copyrightable piece of intellectual property.

The Council of Fashion Designers of America is meeting with members of Congress tomorrow to gather support for a bill to offer copyrightlike protection to clothing designs. While European Union law already contains similar provisions, the CFDA proposal would be a substantial change to the existing American framework. The proposed bill would, for the first time, prevent anyone from copying an original clothing design in the United States and give designers the exclusive right to make, import, distribute, and sell clothes based on their designs.

For mass market designers, intellectual property/copyright strategies are a poor play. Here's why:

• As technology advances, the cost of copying a design is dropping.
• Meanwhile, the costs of legal services are staying the same if not rising.
• As a result, there will be more copyright violation, and since the cost of lawsuits is not dropping, that means the overall enforcement cost is rising.

Increasing your cost structure is always a questionable move, as it leaves you exposed to a competitor who can come in and underprice you. While there is the argument that price is associated with quality, and demand can actually be stimulated by increasing price, this is a niche strategy -- it will not work for mass market firms. Mass market players need to focus on reducing cost to reach lower and lower income brackets and expand their market share accordingly.

For this reason, intellectual property strategies are not suitable for retail/mass market participants; such strategies require increasing enforcement costs, which obviously runs contrary to the idea minimizing costs. Retail players will benefit from thinking of their intellectual property as advertisements that have brand value; allow customers to own and remix the intellectual property, and then incentivize them to redistribute it. From this a stable business ecosystem can emerge.

There's also the intuitive idea that people want to own something, and that ownership breeds enthusiasm. If you want passionate users, people that will evangelize your offer, give them something to own.

(Oh, and thanks to Marginal Revolution for the pointer to the Slate.com article.)

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