The end may be near - gasp! - for easy access to cheap, unauthorised knock-offs of designer clothes.

Fashion-conscious American politicians - there's an oxymoron you don't see every day - are lobbying for a new design piracy Bill, called the Design Piracy Prohibition Act, to be passed.

The Bill, introduced on Aug 2, aims to protect the intellectual property rights of designers and prevent their couture masterpieces - or not - from being copied for a period of up to three years.

If it passes, companies hawking copies of an original design registered by a designer with the US Copyright Office may be slapped with a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Intellectual property protection is already common for designers in Europe. Remember how French label Chloe successfully sued Brit retailer Topshop for producing a near-identical yellow romper for the mass market? Topshop had to pay Chloe roughly US$24,000 (S$36,400) in compensation for the boo-boo.

But in the United States, current laws govern only the sale of counterfeit goods - you know, the fake Louis Vuitton monogram bags from New York's Chinatown - and not the protection of designers' ideas.

American designer Jeffrey Banks, who has helped lobby for the Act, says it would allow a designer to photograph a garment, digitally archive it and register it for copyright protection for a nominal fee.

It would be protected for three years and the designer could sue for damages of up to US$250,000 and insist on having the fake goods destroyed.