To gauge the level of intellectual property (IP) awareness in the Australian fashion industry, IP Australia along with The Australian Fashion Industry and The Fashion Group International recently sent a short survey to 450 members of the fashion industry.

Of the 79 respondents who completed the survey the majority were designers (55%) and marketing professionals (17%).

The results revealed that 51% of respondents were very aware of intellectual property, 39% were somewhat aware and 8.9% were not aware of intellectual property at all. This section of the fashion industry i.e. those who were either somewhat or not at all aware of IP represent an important target group for IP Australia.

The types of intellectual property protection respondents were mostly aware of were Trade Marks (88%) and Copyright (76%). Awareness levels for Design registration and Patent protection came in equally at 66%.

Many respondents were interested in increasing their own awareness of IP, with 73% advising they would like general information about intellectual property, with strategies for protecting their Designs and Trade Marks (64%) and Exporting (56%) being popular topics of interest. Additionally, over one third of respondents chose to be added to our fashion mailing list and will be updated with any future IP Australia activities. These results provided an important guide to the type of information useful for this target audience and IP Australia will be providing tailored seminars and events for future fashion related activities.

IP Australia would like to thank all the survey participants and look forward to using this information to help tailor a 12 month marketing and communication plan. We will be repeating the survey after 12 months to assess any changes in awareness levels and to ensure we are providing relevant and useful intellectual property information.