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12 June 2015, University of OsloWhen fashion and design reached the masses during the post-war period, becoming affordable to expanding categories of consumers in the Western world, art and commerce were contractually brought together. These developments raised pressing questions that are still with us today:How to provide incentives for creativity in business, how to monetize intangible property and how to protect it from infringement and enforce intellectual property rights?What counts as original or as an innovation and to what degree should and can these be protected in face of cheap copies and knock-offs flooding the markets at an unprecedented speed?And possibly most critically:Who has the definition power and the leverage in the form of market access and higher levels of protection in foreign markets?The relocation of production itself to lower cost countries complicates the issue of intellectually property rights in design even further as piracy, trademark infringements, and copying are rampant, and so is the black market in counterfeit goods as the consumer demand grows globally.Creative industries rely upon complex systems of intellectual property rights, from copyright, patent, design rights, to trademark laws that can be used alone or in various combinations in order to protect innovative designs. Innovation in fashion and design is notoriously hard to define, and as such these industries allow us to question the boundaries of intellectual property, the role of IPR in market and profit protection largely benefitting big players, as well as the complex relations between creativity and copying.This public conference will examine the question of fashion and design’s intellectual property rights in the diachronic framework of the post-war period, by bringing together researchers across fields of law, design and fashion history, business and economic history, and anthropology.Papers will examine a wide range of case studies pertaining to intellectual property rights (IPR) laws in national and international frameworks, the challenges to the enforcement of the law, and the lived effects of the law on the ground.The conference will bring together academics, fashion industry practitioners, professionals, students, archivists, museum curators, and the general public.This conference is part of the Enterprise of Culture project, a three-year collaborative project on the history of the fashion business in Europe after 1945 funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area II (HERA II).Conference OrganizersVéronique Pouillard-Maliks, Associate Professor, University of Osloveronique.pouillard@iakh.uio.noTereza Kuldova, Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Oslotereza.kuldova@iakh.uio.noFiona Blair, Project Administrator, University of Leedsenterpriseofculture@leeds.ac.ukhttp://www.enterpriseofculture.leeds.ac.uk/upcoming-events/interrogating-intellectual-property-rights-fashion-and-design/