Clothing is intimately intertwined with daily lives as every individual relies on it. The pervasive issue of plagiarism in the fashion industry has led to an increased demand to protect intellectual property rights. Currently, studies on the protection of fashion design intellectual property rights in China remain in the exploratory stage and warrant further investigation. This paper addresses the issue in two parts. The first part contains an analysis of the theoretical foundation for the protection of fashion design copyrights. It is further divided into three subsections. The first subsection primarily examines the concept of copyrights and laws. The second subsection focuses on the concept of fashion design copyrights and laws. The third subsection analyzes copyright laws concerning fashion designs in China. The second section offers an analysis of infringement cases involving fashion designs published during the Baiyi Cup Intellectual Property Case Summary Writing Competition held in China in 2023. It outlines the shortcomings of the current Chinese copyright laws regarding the protection of fashion designs, and proposes measures for improvement. This study argues that the institutional framework for intellectual property rights in the Chinese fashion industry should align with practical considerations and explores suitable legal regulations and how they relate to specific circumstances in China. Besides refining the legal framework, fashion designers and enterprises must take measures to entablish the intellectual property rights of their clothing brands.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the changes in perception and attitude of fashion major college students before and after receiving their design copyright education. A questionnaire survey was distributed to 200 fashion major college students in Seoul. The results of this study were as follows: First, 46.0% of fashion major students had an experience of purchasing counterfeit fashion goods. Out of those, 81.5% students acknowledged that the product was counterfeit and still purchased it. Categories of counterfeit goods purchased were bags, clothes, and accessories, in order of popularity. The students reported purchasing counterfeit goods twice and three times, in order of popularity. The prices of the counterfeit products were 100,000 to under 200,000 won, and under 100,000 won, in order of popularity. Second, the cognitive domain, the practical domain, and the value domain all showed significant differences between before and after the copyright education. Among these, the differences in the practical domain were the most distinctive. Third, prior to receiving their copyright education, most of the students had no perception about the design copyright system and so most of the students gained helpful information from the education. For future design copyright education, the students want to learn about how to protect their own designs, how to apply copyright in a fashion company, how to avoid invading other people’s designs, and categories of design copyright.