Senate Goes Fashion Forward With Latest Version of Design Piracy Prohibition Act
On August 2, 2007, Senator Orrin Hatch announced S. 1957, a bill intended to provide protection for fashion designs. In his comments introducing the draft legislation, Senator Hatch noted that the goal of the legislation "is to ensure that those who spend their time and money developing new and innovative fashion designs are able to secure and enforce adequate copyright protections for their hard work." Senator Hatch noted while introducing S. 1957 that the current bill is "not perfect" and that "some areas of the bill that need to be improved are: the standard for liability, the definition of designs in the public domain, and the secondary liability provisions." Co-sponsored by Senators Clinton, Feinstein and Schumer, among others, the bill is the latest rendition of the proposed Design Piracy Prohibition Act which was twice previously introduced in the House by Representatives Goodlatte and Delahunt as H.R. 5055 (109th Congress, 2d Session) and H.R. 2033 (110th Congress, 1st Session). Although not yet available, S. 1957 is reported to mirror the content of the prior bills which are available at: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgiin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:h5055ih.txt.pdf and http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_bills&docid=f:h2033ih.txt.pdf
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