The Fashion Industry’s Big Un-Sustainable Intellectual Property Lie
Let’s address an elephant in the room.
In an industry full of fashion and footwear brand’s claiming to be the most ‘sustainable’ in the world, how can intellectual property even exist?
Doesn’t even the idea of privatising intelligence with solutions to global problems facing our society undermine the very premise of sustainability?
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A lot of these brands didn’t become ‘woke’ overnight. They have worked hard at being the best at corporate responsibility and sustainability for decades.
Since the early days of Nike’s infamous human rights dramas, the race to be the best at addressing (or just hiding) negative environmental and social impacts has been on.
But only in the last few years has it become so loud.
One would think that it is a sustainability professional’s dream to see their passion being featured centre stage.
Not too long ago we needed to carefully construct a deeply detailed but also brilliantly simple business case just to even be entertained at the top table.
Forget greenwashing, most of us would have killed for even a mention of sustainability in annual budgets or for senior leaders to actually take your meeting invites seriously.
We would have sold our souls for a bit of greenwashing back then if it meant people didn’t think our only job was to respond with lies to customer complaints about their shitty company.
And now the industry is awash with sustainability branding,
A tidal wave of carefully selected key words to convince the ‘consumer’ your company is part of the solution and not the problem.
That somehow your brand is unique.
If you just buy this carbon negative shoe that we will single-handedly fix the climate change disaster.
What utter rubbish.
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Regardless of the surges in collaborative groups all the brands join (give the Sustainable Apparel Coalition, ZDHC Foundation or Ellen MacArthur Foundation a search for some of the main culprits) the level of actual sharing of solutions to very real problems, is pitiful.
Which is mind-boggling considering they all share the same supply chains.
A fact many of the big boys that cop the biggest heat are the most aware of.
They know that super exclusive material sourced from the vegan-friendly, organic, fair-trade, mountains of planet ‘doesntexist’, is actually just the same shit they’ve been using for years.
They know that room to create truly innovate new products or ways of doing things is so small, that they have to snatch up the space before it’s even there.
That the supplier getting front page news for some new thing created in a lab or Elon Musk’s club for entrepreneurial ego’s, is already deep in bed with the highest bidder.
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Enter the patent.
A little-known or understood legal contract to slap a big badge of ownership on something that has the potential to make money or protect a brand.
In theory, it makes sense.
We all learn about intellectual property in school. Mr X invents cool new vacuum cleaner that revolutionises our lives; slaps on patent and 6.5 billion US dollars later, we can’t live without it.
But what happens when the world moves on, and not only does protecting intelligence seem counterintuitive to designing solutions to global problems, but actively blocks it.
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Enter the Adidas Future Loop.
The world’s first closed-loop shoe — that made the world stop and believe Adidas was going to save us all from drowning in the 20+ billion pairs of shoes that we send to landfill each year.
We watched their million-dollar PR campaigns for future loop with awe as we forgot about the thousands of other fashion products they make based on short-term trends and obsolescence.
And again, customers were taken in by the magician’s sleight of hand as Adidas publicly joined forces with Allbirds in the name of sustainability being anti-competitive.
But let me ask you this,
And keep in mind Adidas continues to be one of my personal favourite companies for actually getting stuff done behind the scenes with their suppliers on improving sustainability…
Why… if they now publicly say that sustainability is anti-competitive, do they have a patent on not only the intellectual property for the materials for Futureloop, but also how it is made?
Take a look for yourself: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP3081109A1
It covers such a wide scope for how to make a recyclable shoe and a list of materials that one could consider using, that one has to ask…
How are other brands like ON and Salomon releasing their own recyclable footwear — are they in contravention of this IP? If so, is it costing them?
If companies are still moving forward with technologies and processes with IP attached to them, what is their purpose — is it all about maximising returns?
It’s clear that a lot of investment is needed for innovation and that companies who invest the hard yards should be able to benefit from this..
But the million dollar question is…
Is it really sustainable to patent sustaining the planet?
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In an age where the entire patent system is slower than the market anyway, perhaps the solution is to follow Elon Musk and open-source the whole thing.
If the market is innovating faster than anyone can keep up with anyway surely it’s just about always staying one step ahead of the game.
Leaving technological innovation to the Universities and privately funded labs and focusing on being the best all-round business to thrive in the market.
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I think what we really need is a clear licensing system with a social mission.
A new approach that doesn’t undermine the business case for investment in new innovation but ensures collaboration where it’s possible and necessary.
Something that is actually designed to suit business in the 21st century.
An example is what challenger footwear brand Vivobarefoot has done recently, agreeing exclusivity until launch with their 3D printing partners.
An open license for a period of limited time would be a considerable improvement than just trying to lock things up with patents all over the place.
Ensuring that what remains attractive is investment in genuine innovation — like figuring out how to make new materials from greenhouse gases!
Allowing meaningful capital to remain flowing in for projects that have returns on investment across the triple bottom line.
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Why is it so important? Because it’s only the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve been in more than one ‘sustainable fashion’ group or meeting where the ‘investment’ team at companies like Adidas have made it clear that they own the space. Bleeding brand blood in order to block the discussion of suppliers or solutions where they already have the rights to it.
As someone who spent her first years working for fossil fuel companies, naively asking why we were buying up renewable technologies to protect from the market, I will never be silent. And I hope you won’t either.
I look forward to hearing what you think.
