A Wakeup Call For Textile Designers by Shaher Bano Khan – The daily Dawn

Lahore Nov. 18: It is one of the most elusive shop selling silks, cottons and other fabrics at Lahore’s liberty market. And yet behind the exclusivity lies the alarming fact that on its third floor, the shops owners are doing a roaring business selling copied designs and counterfeits of original designer lawns. People unable to afford a Rs 1000-1200 three piece shalwar kameez and Duppatta can be seen making a bee line for the Rs. 350 to Rs. 400 knock offs.

On the face of it, there is nothing wrong in wearing knock offs of original designer patterns. Why spend a ludicrous amount when the same level of consumer satisfaction can be reached within a modest range? Here a distinction between consumer (sic) satisfaction and a designer’s loss begs attention for fairness.

What can a designer do to compete with his or her own designs sold off at an embarrassingly low price? Why should the financial and creative suffering be the sole right of the designer? But most of all, what can be done to stop these knock offs or copied designs from becoming the cause of business liquidation of small entrepreneurial enterprises?

Blatant violation of copying and selling original designs remain unchecked at several places in Lahore. Visit those small shops in Cavalry Ground or go to the DHA, Ichra and other places in the city and the customer will have a huge variety of fake prints to choose from.

One of the shop keepers at Cavalry Ground does not show a nuance of embarrassment in openly admitting that he makes big time profits in selling counterfeit prints and that too, with impunity. “Everybody is stealing designs. Go to the Shah Alam market and you’ll see a wide range of fake items. There’s nothing anybody can do about it. Why should I feel bad? Don’t I have to make a living? Besides, I’m only selling what’s given to me by big businessmen. They are the ones stealing and know that nobody is going to stop them.” claims the shop keeper.

He knows not that somebody has decided to do something about it, and is working right at this very moment to stop the piracy of creativity and fabric designs.

Yahsir Waheed, a senior faculty member at the Pakistan School of Fashion Design and a well known designer and his managing partner, Yahya Mansoor, have filed a law suit against a Faisalabad based businessman who has been illegally copying and selling Yahsir’s designs.

“We face loss of company’s reputation and dissatisfaction of our clientele. Over the course of five years, our carefully cultivated reputation is being destroyed through this blatant and massive illegal copying of our original designs. We also feel a rapid decline in market share, brand negativity and the loss of our product’s novel appeal,” says Yahsir.

Yahsir’s textile studio is a small entrepreneurial venture operating since 1999. For the past five years, the company has been successfully producing and marketing a designer brand of lawn. But now it’s loosing its reputation and facing a major financial loss. “The saddest part is that textile giants whose copies are made don’t seem to care because they can afford to exist and have business on a huge scale. Its small ventures like ours, which stand to loose,” says, Yahya.

Unlike Yahsir and his business partner, other designers and textile owners view the infringement of the intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) with hardly any consternation. It matters little to them that that a major industrial piracy network is operating in Pakistan, which is affecting not only their business but is a cause of concern for foreign investors.

Even though Pakistan is a member of the universal copyright and Bern conventions and under the copyrights (amendment) Act 1992, section 12 of the copyrights ordinance has a legal system to protect and facilitate the acquisition and disposition of property rights, piracy levels remain unusually high. “it is important for people to know that industrial designs are protected under the Industrial Designs Ordinance 2000, which provides protection to the owner. The problem, as in the case with other laws, lies with enforcement.” Says the designer somberly.

In its 2000 report on Pakistan, the international Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) notes that “piracy levels remain very high for all the copyright industries and estimated trade losses due to piracy increased to more the $136.9 million in 2000.”

“You know, in view of the impending WTO 2005 deadline, it becomes all the more important for Pakistan to be aware of the intellectual property rights issues and industrial design protection. At the moment we have sought a court injunction against the person copying our designs. We didn’t want to sit and let somebody wipe us out of business. No, our company is not going to look around for someone else to take the initiative. We intend to set a precedent and will continue to fight till we set one, “asserts Yahsir.