Jon Stokes writes about this on Arstechnica, looking at a forthcoming Virginia Law Review paper entitled “The Piracy Paradox: Innovation and Intellectual Property in Fashion Design,” in which two law professors investigate how the fashion industry manages to thrive despite rampant copying of clothing designs.

While it’s not simply applicable to other areas (such as software), quite a few interesting observations are made – the most interesting (to me) is that making a generalistic presumption about needing very strong IP protection in order to drive innovation is just plain wrong, as the fashion industry proves. It may apply to other areas, but it’s clearly not a universal rule.

I actually think that fashion and software have a lot in common, particularly in terms of the trends that surface and evolve, and the speed at which the market moves. These aspects appear to be key factors, so perhaps there is a strong case for taking note of these observations for software… anyway, have a read and see what you think of it!