What do Chanel’s interlocking Cs, Louboutin’s red sole and David Bowie’s stage costumes have in common? The answer: they are all protected by intellectual property!
The Sound & Vision R&D department has been working on the Europeana Fashion project in collaboration with twenty-two other partners from all over Europe since March 2012. In collaboration with the Europeana Foundation, Europeana Fashion recently published its guidelines on how to manage intellectual property rights for fashion content. By releasing these guidelines, Europeana Fashion wants to promote awareness around sharing and re-using intellectual property in and outside the fashion domain. Releasing these guidelines provides support to institutions in a time of proliferation of cultural content in both on- and offline media.
A pragmatic approach
The guidelines were originally developed in 2012-2013 by the Victoria and Albert Museum to provide content providers to the Europeana Fashion portal with a pragmatic approach to securing permission from rights holders. Europeana Fashion has recognised the potential usefulness for professionals in galleries, libraries, archives, museums and the creative industries and wishes to share this best practice with others in the cultural heritage sector.
Roxanne Peters, Intellectual Property Manager at the V&A says: 'Fashion is as important as any other art or design practice. From established design houses like Chanel to emerging designers, it's crucial their work is appropriately protected. Cultural institutions have a responsibility to pursue best practice, give credit where credit is due and educate others in a virtual world.'
Download the IPR Guide
The guidelines are available from the Europeana Fashion project site: http://blog.europeanafashion.eu/publications/
More info
- Read more about the Europeana Fashion project here.
- To meet the project up close and personal, join us at the conference Made in Italy: re-use of fashion heritage and new digital perspectives on April 9th in London.
- The first version of the Europeana Fashion portal was launched in December - find out more in this R&D blog post.