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The ill-advised Design Piracy Prohibition act will potentially stifle creativity among independent designers in the American fashion industries. If a young designer is coming up with some new designs, if it is decided that these designs are too similar to other fashion designs produced by large corporatations, the young designer will find themselves litigated out of business. The trade-off in this scenario is too great. It's the same old story - large corporations get greater control and protection over existing designs, but designers find themselves restricted by a legal noose around their neck which results in less innovation and risk-taking for fear of being sued. The knock on effect for the general public / consumers is that there will be less innovative designs on the market.

Having said that, the benefits of such a law and the reasons being bandied around are that it is being brought in to prevent counterfeit knock-offs (often produced in China) that tend to hit US stores before the original designs and for a fraction of the price. Fashion designs are protected by copyright in many European countries, and the counter-argument goes that creativity has not been stifled in these countries but counterfeiting has been relatively deterred. Certainly room for debate...

"Under this legislation, however, designers will need to consult with a lawyer throughout the design process to ensure that every new design created could not subjectively be found at a later date to be "closely and substantially similar" to one protected in the Copyright registry...

Further, young, up-and-coming designers would be susceptible to legal intimidation from designing anything new at all, as they would likely not have the resources to fight a legal challenge in court...

While the bill purports to keep all fashion designs that have existed in the past free and open for all to use, the legislation would allow the ability to copyright non-original design elements in the public domain if arranged in an original way.

Moreover, since there is no test for originality, the registry will begin to be populated with designs that from the public domain. Thus, a designer who draws upon inspiration from the public domain, can easily find himself/herself stuck in costly litigation. UPDATE