Susan Scafidi

I am a law school professor.  But for nearly 10 years, I’ve kept a file on the clothing/textile industry in my office and the latest Vogue hidden in my briefcase – not exactly standard reading in a profession dominated by academic tweeds and legal pinstripes. Despite my interest in creativity beyond the usual margins of intellectual property protection, fashion seemed a little too cutting-edge for the ivory tower.  Now, with a multimillion dollar counterfeits crisis and the new challenge of fast fashion, it’s time to come out of the closet!

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Professional Bio (a.k.a. the formal version):  Susan Scafidi is the first U.S. law professor ever to offer a course in Fashion Law, and she has testified in Congress regarding the proposed extension of legal protection to fashion designs through the Design Piracy Prohibition Act.  Her areas of expertise include intellectual property and cultural property, and she is currently a visiting professor at Fordham Law School as well as a tenured member of both the law and history faculties at SMU.  She has also taught at a number of other law schools, including most recently Yale and Georgetown.  After attending Duke University and the Yale Law School, she pursued graduate study in legal history at Berkeley and the University of Chicago and clerked for Judge Morris S. Arnold of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.  Professor Scafidi is the author of Who Owns Culture? Appropriation and Authenticity in American Law (2005) and also writes writes a blog on fashion and intellectual property, Counterfeit Chic.