LUXURY ECONOMY AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY: Critical Reflections

Intellectual property law plays a pivotal role in ensuring that luxury goods companies can recoup their investments in the creation and dissemination of their copyrighted works, trademarked logos, and patented designs. In 2011, global sales for luxury goods reached about $250 billion, and consumers in East and Southeast Asia accounted for more than 50 percent of that figure. The rapid expansion of the market has prompted some retailers to wield intellectual property against the influx of imitators and counterfeiters.

The Luxury Economy and Intellectual Property comprehensively explores the rise of the luxury goods economy and the growing role of intellectual property in creating, sustaining, and regulating this economy. Leading scholars across various disciplines critically consider the industry, its foundational intellectual property laws, and the public interest and social concerns arising from the intersection of economics and law. Topics covered include defining the concept of luxury, the social life of luxury goods, concerns about distributive justice in a world flooded by luxury goods and knockoffs, the globalization of luxury goods, and the economic, social, and political ramifications of the meteoric rise of the Asian luxury goods market.

Haochen Sun is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law. He teaches and writes in the areas of intellectual property and property law. He has been a Visiting Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Professor Sun has organized a few leading international conferences on intellectual property and has taught courses on luxury brand protection. His recent publications include Living Together in One Civilized World: How Luxury Companies and Consumers Can Fulfill Their Ethical Responsibilities to the Poor, 46 UC Davis Law Review 547 (2013).

Barton Beebe is the John M. Desmarais Professor of Intellectual Property Law at New York University School of Law. He has been the Anne Urowsky Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School and a Visiting Professor of Law at Stanford Law School. In 2007, Professor Beebe was a Special Master in the case of Louis Vuitton Malletier v. Dooney & Bourke, Inc., No. 04 Civ. 2990 (SAS) (S.D.N.Y.). His published works include Intellectual Property Law and the Sumptuary Code, 123 Harvard Law Review 809 (2010).

Madhavi Sunder is Professor of Law at the University of California, Davis, School of Law. Her work traverses numerous legal fields, from intellectual property to human rights law and the First Amendment. She has been Visiting Professor of Law at Yale Law School, the University of Chicago Law School, and Cornell Law School. She was named a Carnegie Scholar in 2006. She is the author of From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice (2012).