Information on Copyright, regarding your own and others work, sound and visuals
When
working in a creative environment, or any for that matter, it is fundamental
that you consider copyright whilst creating your work.
Copyright
is a legal concept, which is endorsed by the majority of government. It gives
the creator of original work exclusive rights to it. For example the copyright
of DVD’s as it is illegal to copy movies.
When
speaking creatively, copyright applies to a huge range of ‘works’ such as poems,
plays, movies, dances, audio, paintings, drawings, sculptures and graphic
designs etc. meaning the creators of this work brand it as their own, meaning
it is illegal to copy the work.
Copyright
doesn’t cover ideas or information, only how they are expressed. For example a
movie could use a similar plot but it would have to be executed in a different
way for it to be legal.
In
the fashion industry, ‘fast fashion’ houses have faced lawsuits over their
cheap imitations of catwalk garments. Some high street stores have made exact
replicas of designer clothes, which result in fines. For example Forever 21
have faced several lawsuits from Diane Von Furstenberg and Anne Sui among many
other well-known designers.
Primark
has been accused several times of imitation the work of those in the industry
from Superdry to Mary Katrantzou to Prabal Gurung.
There
is however no official copyright in the fashion industry, the whole point of copyright is to encourage greater innovation and
output of creative works, and the fashion industry has that. It's highly
competitive, with many players and new creative works coming out all the time.
In fact, studies have shown it's this very lack of fashion copyright that makes the industry so innovative.
When creating my work I must consider
copyright also. For example for my PR brief in which I am rebranding Lanvin, I
cannot find a perfume ad in a magazine and copy it as that is against
copyright.
Also when creating fashion film and video in
class, if I intend to put the film on the internet where it can be seen
globally, I need to make sure that if there is any audio on the video that I
have permission to use it from the creator. The audio could be used if I have independently
mixed it or changed it in some way. Moreover if I find visuals online, I would
have to make sure that the original owner of the work has allowed me to use
them and that I credit them.
Just
like if I were to create a piece of work it is in a way copyrighted to me and
if anyone wanted to use it they would have to give me appropriate credit.
Primarks designer copies
