I would be the last one to claim that fashion designs aren’t artful enough to deserve copyright protection, but that’s not the issue with the Innovative Design Protection and Piracy Prevention Act. Copyright protection is a means to an end and that end is the promotion of innovation.

One reason that fashion design has been elevated to an art form is precisely because of the lack of copyright protection. So, while fashion design doesn’t qualify for the same legal protections that other artistic creations have (because the courts have decided that fashion is too utilitarian), the creative possibilities for design and the rapid pace of innovation have increased exponentially.

Unlike musicians, filmmakers, photographers, writers, sculptors and graphic designers, fashion designers may incorporate just about any element of their peers’ creative work into their own design.

Anyone familiar with the justification for copyright protection – without ownership there is no incentive to innovate – might be surprised by the critical and economic success of the fashion industry. A complex creative ecology has developed in the fashion world that balances a designer’s need to both stand out and fit in. Since anyone can copy anyone else, they do.

Designers who have reputations as innovators don’t want to be accused of copying, so they have a strong incentive to come up with something new every season.

The almost magical result of this process is the establishment of trends. Some designers have ascended to the highest echelons of the fashion world and are well-known for setting new trends with their original designs, but all designers admit that they’re inspired by ‘the street’, where people mix and match their own personal looks, combining a new Marc Jacobs bag with grandma’s vintage sweater and army surplus boots.

But just because copying is legal doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. In order to succeed, designers have to develop a signature style – a look that everyone will instantly recognize as theirs. Designers who have reputations as innovators don’t want to be accused of copying, so they have a strong incentive to come up with something new every season that’s unique to them and their signature style.

There are several reasons why the fast fashion giants like H&M, Zara and Topshop haven’t destroyed the business of high-end designers. One obvious reason is that the customer who shops for the $19.99 version of a Chanel skirt is quite simply not the same customer who buys clothing in a Chanel boutique.

That’s one reason that so many A-list designers – including Karl Lagerfeld and Vera Wang – have decided to knock themselves off and create lines for lower-end retailers like Target and Kohl’s. Far from cannibalizing their own product sales, these designers realized that they could expand their clientele and their brand by marketing a variety of products at vastly different price points.

The fast fashion industry has actually strengthened the fashion industry overall since it has accelerated the market for global fashion. The big bonus for high-end designers is that their influential designs become influential even faster than before. And because trends are established so quickly, fashionistas who buy the products that top designers sell have an incentive to move on to the next new thing when the masses have settled on the trendy knock-off. By the time the next season comes around, designers must compete all over again for customers hungry for the new designs that best capture the zeitgeist.

Of course this culture of copying has affected the creative process. One lovely side-effect is that high-end designers find themselves challenged to create truly innovative and surprising designs that they believe will be hard to knock-off. Stuart Weitzman, for instance, said that copyists forced him to innovate, as he did with the Bowden-Wedge, whose heel shape requires special materials like titanium or steel. A knock-off using cheaper materials would snap.

The ironic thing is that the fashion industry doesn’t talk about how revolutionary it really is. The fact that people can steal from one another’s designs is often considered fashion’s dirty little secret.

But it’s time to let the cat out of the bag.

With the widespread use of digital technology, industries with a great deal of copyright protection are being forced to operate as if they don’t have any. Their creative work is being shared, whether they like it or not. Some might say that copyright protection has become their crutch — they can’t figure out how to operate without it.

We have to wonder whether the fashion industry has some lessons it could teach the music, TV, film and publishing industries. The last thing that fashion designers need is to become dependent on the same crutch that has crippled the media industries.

Image: The Bowden-Wedge, designed by Stuart Weitzman

The full version of this article was originally published by American website The Design Observer. Read it here.

For more from Johanna Blakley on fashion, copyright and creativity, view her talk for TED.com below.