Ralph Lauren to Fendi: Why Indian crafts are easy to borrow, hard to protect

Why in the News

Two global luxury houses have carried Indian craft techniques into new collections without acknowledging their origin. A pink evening gown showcased by Ralph Lauren carries aari work, the hook embroidery of Gujarat, described in the label’s own wording as “hand applied embellishments”, and Fendi’s autumn collection carries a mirror work Baguette bag modelled on the mirrored purses sold at Indian craft fairs and priced at around Rs 8 lakh. This follows the appropriation of Kolhapuri chappals by Prada. The tension is stated plainly by practitioners in the field: intellectual property is territorial while culture is not, and a traditional craft has cultural provenance but no clearly identifiable legal owner, so the borrowing is cheap while the community behind the craft has no ready route to recognition, ownership or a share of the value created.

What does a Geographical Indication protect, and what does it leave out?

1. What it is: A Geographical Indication (GI) is a sign identifying a good as originating in a defined territory, where a given quality or reputation of that good is attributable to its geographical origin, registered in India under the Geographical Indications of Goods (Registration and Protection) Act, 1999.
2. What it covers: A GI protects the name, the origin and the reputation of a qualifying product, so an outsider cannot sell a good under that name without meeting the registered specification.
3. Who can enforce it: Under the Act both registered proprietors and registered authorised users hold the right to seek relief for infringement, including injunctions, damages and an account of profits.
4. Where it stops: A GI does not necessarily protect every motif, stitch or visual element associated with a craft, so a brand can reproduce the look without using the protected name.

Why does a traditional craft fall outside conventional intellectual property?

1. The territorial mismatch: Intellectual property rights are territorial and culture is not, so a right secured in one jurisdiction does not travel with the craft into the market where it is being copied.
2. No category fits: A centuries old technique may involve an artistic expression, a design, a geographical identity or a protected name, and none of those categories captures a tradition that belongs to a community and has evolved across generations.
3. Provenance without an owner: Traditional crafts carry cultural provenance and no clearly identifiable legal owner, and that gap is precisely the space that is exploited.
4. Individual ownership excludes: Vesting a craft right in a single proprietor can exclude the very community that preserved it, so the obvious legal fix reproduces the problem in a different form.

Why does a recognised right still not produce redress?

1. Recognition is not capacity: Recognising a right and giving a community the practical capacity to exercise it are two different things, and Indian craft communities hold more of the first than the second.
2. Cross border litigation is prohibitive: Enforcement against a multinational fashion house has to be pursued in that house’s jurisdiction, and such litigation is resource intensive in a way an artisan collective cannot sustain.
3. A right on paper: A right without the resources to monitor, negotiate and enforce it is only a right on paper, so monitoring capacity decides whether the right exists in practice.
4. Where institutional capacity would come from: Producer organisations, cooperatives and other representative bodies can document provenance, organise authorised users, negotiate collectively and pursue enforcement on a community’s behalf.

How do luxury brands avoid attribution?

1. The “inspired” framing: European brands work within an inspiration logic that treats a technique as an influence rather than as a source requiring credit.
2. Renaming the technique: Describing hook embroidery as “hand applied embellishments” detaches the work from the place and the practitioners that gave it its name.
3. The machine route: Where the work is produced entirely by machine it can be classified as computerised crewel work rather than as aari, which operates as an escape from the craft’s identity altogether.
4. Asymmetric legal frameworks: Design and copyright frameworks in developed countries are more robust than those of developing countries, so the brand litigates from the stronger jurisdiction.
5. The value the craft does not capture: The mirror work bag retails at around Rs 8 lakh, while the mirrored purses it draws on are sold at Indian craft fairs at a fraction of that.

What would a custodianship model require?

1. Custodianship as the legal test: The law could recognise a community as custodian where a continuing relationship exists between a cultural expression and the community that has preserved, practised and transmitted it.
2. How provenance would be proved: Historical records, regional practice, oral testimony and community knowledge would together establish that continuing relationship.
3. What the community would hold: A collective legal identity, documented provenance, enforceable rights and a mechanism for attribution and benefit sharing are the four elements such a framework needs.
4. The state’s role, bounded: The government should assist with registration, recognition and enforcement while ownership remains with the community, since governments change and cultural custodianship passes across generations.
5. The decision right that follows: The people who have sustained and transmitted a tradition should have a meaningful role in decisions concerning its protected commercial use.

Can documentation protect a craft without exposing it?

1. The case for a registry: A carefully maintained digital registry could document motifs, techniques, names, regions and custodial communities, and would make it much harder for a company to claim a centuries old Indian tradition originated in a European design studio.
2. What a registry would not do: Such a registry would not grant ownership over every visual similarity, so it functions as evidence of provenance rather than as a monopoly.
3. The risk of recording: Traditional knowledge cannot simply be recorded and handed to an outside institution, since some knowledge is sacred or restricted and documentation must not result in an outsider gaining control over it.
4. The opposite failure: Protection should not turn a living craft into a museum piece, so the objective cannot be an absolute community monopoly over every future use of a technique.

What does the international framework offer?

1. The negotiation under way: The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is working towards international rules addressing misappropriation, attribution, community rights and benefit sharing, and that framework is still being negotiated.
2. The precedent already adopted: WIPO adopted a treaty in 2024 dealing with genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge, which shows international intellectual property law beginning to recognise these questions beyond conventional copyright and patents.
3. The existing avenue: The Berne Convention gives creators and communities legal avenues to challenge unauthorised use, with the outcome depending on the specific work and the applicable national law.

Challenges to protecting traditional Indian crafts

1. Registration protects the product, not the technique: A GI attaches to a named good from a defined region, so the underlying skill can be lifted and applied to an entirely different product without touching the registration. Eg. Kutch embroidery holds a GI registration, while the hook embroidery technique itself is the subject of no registration anywhere.
   The Fix: Create a distinct registry of craft techniques and their custodial communities, separate from the goods based GI register.
2. A registration does not by itself produce a case: Even a registered GI leaves a community facing an appropriation that is answered through public statements rather than through infringement proceedings. Eg. Kolhapuri chappals hold a GI registration and the dispute over the Prada design still played out as a controversy rather than as litigation.
   The Fix: Fund a standing legal cell for registered GI proprietors to issue notices and file proceedings without the community bearing the cost.
3. Indian registration has no extraterritorial reach: A GI on the Indian register does not bind a design house abroad unless the name is separately protected in that jurisdiction. Eg. The proprietor of the Darjeeling tea mark has had to pursue separate proceedings in multiple foreign jurisdictions to stop misuse of the name.
   The Fix: Prioritise foreign registration of the highest value craft GIs in the European Union, the United States and Japan through the existing trade negotiation channels.
4. Authorised user registration is thin: The right to sue lies with the registered proprietor and registered authorised users, and most working artisans are never entered on that register. Eg. A GI is typically registered in the name of a board, society or association rather than of the artisans practising the craft.
   The Fix: Make authorised user enrolment part of the same application process as the GI registration itself, with no separate fee for individual artisans.
5. India’s documentation infrastructure covers medicine, not crafts: The country’s defensive documentation was built for traditional medicine and has no equivalent for craft motifs and techniques. Eg. The Traditional Knowledge Digital Library documents Ayurveda, Unani, Siddha and Yoga formulations for examiners at foreign patent offices.
   The Fix: Extend the same model to a craft motif and technique database accessible to design registries and customs authorities abroad.

Conclusion

The appropriation question is usually argued as one of etiquette, and it is a question of legal architecture. What cannot both hold is a system that vests rights in identifiable owners within fixed territories and a body of craft knowledge that has neither an owner nor a border, and no amount of enforcement will reconcile the two without a category built for collective custodianship. The practical middle ground being argued for is narrow and achievable: documented provenance, attribution, and a share in the value, without converting a living practice into a protected relic. What to watch is whether the WIPO negotiation on traditional cultural expressions produces a binding instrument on the model of its 2024 treaty on genetic resources, since that is the only forum in which a right created in India could acquire effect in the markets where the copying happens.

Back2Basics: World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

1. What it is: WIPO is the United Nations specialised agency for intellectual property, providing the forum in which international intellectual property treaties are negotiated and administered.
2. When it was formed: It was established by the WIPO Convention signed at Stockholm in 1967, which entered into force in 1970, and it became a specialised agency of the United Nations in 1974.
3. Where it sits: Its headquarters is at Geneva, Switzerland, and its membership covers the large majority of states, India included.
4. What it runs: It administers the principal international treaties on copyright, patents, trademarks and designs, and operates global registration systems for patents, trademarks and industrial designs.

Matching Previous Year Question

“Which of the following has/have been accorded ‘Geographical Indication’ status? (1) Banaras Brocades and Sarees (2) Rajasthani Daal-Bati-Churma (3) Tirupathi Laddu Select the correct answer using the code given below. (a) 1 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3”