When Brand Parody Becomes Trademark Infringement
Parody, trademark law and fashion may sound like unlikely companions, but they often share the same scarf, usually knotted around an IP lawyer’s neck.…
The Law Against Scarcity: How the Law Shapes High Fashion Business and Legal Strategies
How the Prohibition on Destroying Unsold Fashion May Make Luxury Scarcer, More Expensive and More Legally Engineered I, as a younger IP lawyer, once…
The Scent of a Trademark: India’s First Smell Mark and the Future of Sensory Branding in Fashion
India has quietly walked into a new era of trademark law. The acceptance of Sumitomo Rubber Industries’ “rose scented tyre” as a registrable trademark…
Green is the New Law: Fashion, Virtue, and the Ecomark Bureaucracy
The Ecomark Rules, 2024, apply to seventeen major categories of consumer goods, ranging from soaps and paper to textiles and electronics, under a voluntary…
GIs of Time: How the World’s Watchmakers Turn Geography into a Trademarked Tick
This is the geography of timekeeping: when the law itself becomes a watchmaker, measuring not seconds but a sense of place. As a child,…
From Catwalk to Customs: Fashion’s Global Border Patrol
“Fashion is the armor to survive the reality of everyday life,” observed fashion photographer and historian Bill Cunningham. However, the armour is now increasingly…
Fashion in Wonderland: Patents, Biotech, AI and the Impending Rise of Living Garments
a civilised panic about the future DISCLAIMER: It’s said Lewis Carroll was tripping when he wrote Alice in Wonderland. Fashion in Wonderland is my…
The Devil May Wear Prada, But Law Doesn’t Wear Fashion: Deconstructing Priestly’s Anguish at Fashion and Law
I have heard Meryl Streep’s Miranda Priestly’s monologue, delivered as take down to Anne Hathaway’s Andy Sachs, in Devil Wears Prada more times than…