Textile Design Copyrights Remain Tricky After High Court Ruling

The narrow question the U.S. Supreme Court recently answered for the fashion and retail world avoided the epicenter of the contentious, complicated landscape of textile copyright law itself.

The designs often are made up of redundant-by-definition patterns consisting of finite elements and shapes. Determining whether an infringed work is original, “substantially similar,” or likely to have been seen by the alleged infringer presents twists different from other media.

The high court Feb. 24 settled a question of copyright registration validity, finding unintended legal errors don’t void registrations. That restored an infringement award granted by a jury to fabric designer Unicolors ...