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Industrial Design legal protection is one of the hot topics currently debated in the Intellectual Property realm. The European Union, the United States of America, China, and Japan are the main Design-players worldwide, and consistently, from the Transatlantic Area to Eastern Asia, Industrial Design has been subject to important legislative reforms at the heart of growth policies. In particular, one of the Design-based global industries, the fashion industry, has been claiming for "more IP protection" in the field of Fashion Design, but not always did the Legislator meet its requests. The current Thesis aims at studying the genesis of Industrial Design legal protection in the European Union, the United States of America, China, and Japan in order to compare and contrast their respective Industrial Design frameworks and policies. The ultimate goal is to inspect whether Industrial Design protection is converging towards one of the four models and why, and to find which of them better satisfies the needs of the fashion industry. It will be found that they are all converging towards the European Model, which best satisfies the "flexibility" needs of the fashion industry too.
About the author
Margherita Farina is an IP lawyer specialized in industrial designs and design patents, particularly fond of the protection of the creative and industries. She has been engaged in comparative IP studies for years, at Bocconi University of Milan and the National University of Singapore, from which she graduated with honors, and Berkeley Law (LL.M.).
