LAS 5S HERRAMIENTAS BÁSICAS DE MEJORA DE LA CALIDAD.
6. IMPLEMENTACIÓN DE LA METODOLOGÍA 5S.
Properties
• Textile designs • Know-how
Protection Tools
• Copyright
• Contracts and agreements • Alternative measures
Issues
• Motivations to protect IP: rewards • Barriers to enforcement: costs • Alternatives to formal protection
• Contracts and agreements provide clarity
“From Croft to Couture” is how Di Gilpin Ltd, a knitwear design studio in Fife, describes its business model, in which garments are designed and hand-made in Scottish homes and sold from catwalks and selected boutiques in Europe and Japan . This simple but ambitious goal is made possible by an equally expansive knowledge, built by founder and Creative Director Di Gilpin over 32 years in the industry, of the pros and cons of IP protection and alternatives that work when money and time are in scarce supply .
Starting as an independent designer on Skye in 1983, Di established the limited company in 2011 and enlisted a team of 90 hand-knitters . Today hers is a renowned fashion brand which also sells to private clients around the world and collaborates with leading couture houses . The company also designs, sells or licenses yarns, knitting kits, and patterns for craft knitters, and invests in teaching and community projects to help maintain Scotland’s rich hand-knitting heritage .
“We do quite a lot of design and production for other companies, for example Top Shop and some London fashion designers,” Di explained . “We are given a brief and we do the creative work and the technical work to bring that product into the market for them . We may go on and do production and we may not . We can out-source that to factories or to knitting co-operatives, sometimes to Ireland .
“Then we have our own signature collection, which is Di Gilpin, that we sell to several companies abroad . And we do a bespoke service here which is very big . We send out a look book for customers to choose styles that they want to
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order . Sometimes they will change the sizing, colour, and material . I am just making five pieces for a couple in Paris at the moment for December . That is a full suit, hand-knitted with jacket and jumper for the guy . So they have been here, chosen fibres; they come every year and choose something different . Other people may do it just simply on the Internet .”Why protect IP?
Across all industries there are at least two common justifications for protecting IP: to secure a means for being rewarded for the effort of
developing the property, and to motivate innovation among designers, who will own a protected product’s monopoly rights, which they can exploit by selling or licensing .
However IP protection is not a universal goal . In the world of fashion design, the industry’s very name requires that participants work with ever-changing idea trends and customer demands . Particularly in the competitive ‘fast fashion’ realm of high street retailers, there is a prevalence of labels which copy the work of industry trendsetters . Thus among style innovators there is a view that registering their design rights or pursuing infringement cases is counter-productive, as the market moves so quickly that products are likely to fall out of fashion by the time such measures have been taken . Staying ahead of the game has become a necessity, as Di explained:
“My attitude generally is that if you are developing your design work and you are the maker, you know the provenance of it, you know exactly where it has come from and to a degree it is a form of flattery if somebody is copying your work . You have to keep a step ahead anyway, so that is what a good, healthy designer will be doing most of the time .”
Nevertheless Di prefers a belt-and-braces approach, as she is very aware of the nature and value of her company’s IP . In the case of Di Gilpin signature pieces, the IP concerns the exacting design of each garment, the specified quality of wool knitted into it and the extensive production skills and effort required to make it (some products in the collection can take up to two months to create by hand) . The company thus protects its designs through unregistered copyright and unregistered design right (UK and EU), while registered trade marks and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) protect the company’s brand and production knowledge . Other measures, such as contractual and licensing agreements, assign ownership and stipulate the use of Di Gilpin IP when the company works in design collaborations or development projects .
Barriers to rights enforcement
It is not enough to protect one’s work; the IP system only works if the protection is enforced and infringements are pursued . Across the creative industries however, analyses of the costs and benefits of employing lawyers, paying registration fees and spending time to build infringement cases – often against larger, better resourced companies – tip heavily towards the
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“A woman who used to organise American tours to the UK bought one of my garments and a knitting kit on one of her visits . A few years later I was doing two lecture tours of the States, because we had launched a yarn with Rowan who is one of the big knitting companies, and I had designed the yarn and done several knitting books with it . In one of the seminars a woman came up to me and said, ‘The design you have got here in the book, you have cribbed that . I have just knitted that from a knitting kit by – ’ and it was the woman who had been in my studio . The woman at the seminar said, ‘It was in Vogue Knitting and it was advertised all over the States; she must have sold a lot of kits .’ She brought in the pattern, and the woman who made the kit had changed the front cover of the pattern, but she had left in all my charts and she had failed to take out my copyright and there on the bottom was ‘Di Gilpin 1991’ .
“She has never done anything like it since . I did not do anything . This was 12 to 15 years ago and I had no idea how to go about it, particularly with somebody in another country who had taken the whole thing; I just let it go .” Now Di benefits from having a partner who is a barrister specialising in IP, and the company is able to engage a solicitor as necessary . But she is very aware that the costs of such expertise are prohibitive for others:
“The problem is actually if there is a case to be brought, actually funding it, proving your IP . My IP is evident; I have intellectual property rights in everything that I do . So it is the cost; it is purely the cost of taking on a lawyer . The company has a lawyer in Edinburgh who can negotiate our deals and whatever we need to do, but if there is an infringement on work being produced, for a lot of companies this is a real headache because they cannot afford the amount of work it takes to actually take the case forward . I think my partner’s view would be that you can put as much in place and pay as much money as you wanted to protect yourself, but that will do nothing if you cannot afford to then enforce it .”
Alternatives to formal protection
Although Di is fortunate to have the resources to pursue enforcement of her IP, she is also a proponent of other protection measures which do not imply the need for enforcement and thus cost far less . One method, a collective insurance scheme, was developed by Di’s partner for the company, but she feels it would benefit the entire industry .
“The concept that I would like to see set up and activated is where groups within the textile sector can get together and pay for the insurance as a group collectively . I mean that is what I think would be the future . My partner has taken the idea from advice he has been giving to a renewable energy company . There are specialist insurance companies that do this and his idea was actually that something like an industry agency could create an umbrella and organise the insurance and then people could become protected by it, so that it was not costly for each person but the whole industry benefited . It would be a great project .”
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Other protection measures are cost-free, such as designing products to be too complicated to copy . Di deploys her know-how – her extensive experience and technical skills – to make garments that are difficult to replicate, especially by a machine:“We know our work is hard to copy because a company tried to get a designer in London to replicate one of the pieces that was proving incredibly popular and he couldn’t do it . He did not understand how it had been knitted at all . It makes us smile each time we think about it – vindication . You see, that is what I am thinking about all the time: When I design I am thinking that everything I do would be impossible to knit on a machine, and only if I intend it to be made on the machine will I make a design that we can replicate . That is how I protect the IP .”
Another protective step requires careful analysis of the knowledge and ability possessed by Di, her employees and freelance knitters . While this is a difficult asset to capture, once gathered it will inform the company’s understanding of its IP, support its financial sustainability, and ensure that the traditions and skills of knitting are available to future generations . “We want to be able to take one of our base designs and then direct it into a form that is new and innovative hopefully, but can be re-used . So that the knowledge exists, the technical knowledge, the experience is there, the understanding of the discipline . We are trying to record it actually at the moment,” Di said . The company’s Production Manager, Sheila Greenwell, is heavily involved in the project: “We are trying to have a database of styles and patterns . To capture it all but also then to be able to cross-reference . Ideally we would like to be able to cross-reference because I keep on telling Di that she has already invented all the knitting patterns and ideas that one could ever have time to do . But the knowledge, the techniques and the skills to cross-reference, that is the intangible isn’t it? That is where we sit down over a cup of coffee and say, ‘Well, we could take this and do that with it . It is incredibly difficult to quantify .’”
Across is operations, Di Gilpin Ltd is tightening the reins on sharing the company’s IP and knowledge – another cost-free way of protecting it . While many companies decide it is advantageous to promote their work and be less restrictive, there are instances where stricter measures can be essential, as Di has learned:
“I know so many people that have been absolutely totally ripped off, in Scotland, by designers in other parts of the world and London, where they have been asked to sample stuff and put all their creative input into it, and then they have either simply just not been paid or the product has been taken and manufactured elsewhere . I think it is a real problem for Scotland actually, in textiles .
“We have really clamped down on anything being out in the public domain . So we send out look books to individual clients and we check them before we do so we know that they are individuals . We are very careful about things like that . And we are keeping very quiet about product development and who we
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are working with; we don’t generally discuss all of those things . I have learned that actually it is the only way to be at the end of the day if you want to keep your provenance and keep everything tight .”
Contracts and agreements provide clarity
Di’s attitude toward using contracts and NDAs also has changed . Although creative enterprises are often inclined to rely on trust-based, verbal agreements, Di now tries to get everything down in writing, as early as possible:
“We try to set up contracts at the start of projects but it does not always work . Some companies are much easier to work with on that front than others . Agreements are really good because they give clarity to the situation . How can you know what somebody else is thinking? You can’t . The only way you can do it is to reach an agreement, which is written down and clear, and I think that is it . I mean two years ago I would not have even said that, I would have been on the trust-basis side of things .”
In development work, Di contracts with a commissioning company to
develop and possibly also produce the IP for the commissioner, who pays Di a fee and retains the IP . With collaborative work with other designers, Di expects to retain the resulting IP .
This case has shown that there are alternative protection solutions for small companies that find the costs of legal protection and enforcement beyond their budgets . Whether one chooses the standard tools of copyrights, trade marks, and patents, or alternatives such as those above, a thorough understanding of the properties owned, and which methods are relevant, is essential .