On Protection For Trade Dress According To Intellectual Property Law

The concept of trade dress stems from U.S. Law. In the United States law, the meaning of trade dress is gradually established by a series of cases. All the non-functional elements, which indicate the source of goods or services, constitute the overall image of the goods or services, such as product appearance, style, color and their combination, constitute trade dress. Trade dress is a kind of commercial marks. With the development of society, trade dress increasingly plays important role as business logo. Increasingly, trade dress becomes the important weight in the international trade and commercial competition. China's existing legal system of intellectual property does not protect trade dress as a separate object. Although copyright law, patent law, trademark law and unfair competition law are related to the provisions of the trade dress, these regulations are more lax and the scope of protection is narrow with strict conditions, which is not able to meet the needs. Therefore, China should proceed from the whole legal system of intellectual property rights, improve legislation, provide different protection for different trade dress to improve the protection for trade dress and enhance our competitive advantage.This text is composed of three chapters. It includes discussions about the basic theory of trade dress and proposals of the protection for trade dress according to intellectual property law in China. It introduces foreign exisiting mode of trade dress protection, comparing with our legislative and judicial cases and analyses the immediate impovement in China's trade dress protection.The first chapter,"trade dress and necessity for it's protection according to intellectual property law"is dissertations about the basic theory of trade dress.It analyses the definition and characteristics of trade dresss in detail and compares trade dress with related objects of intellectual property rights. The last part is about the necessity of trade dress protection from the aspect of legal and practical needs.The second chapter,"foreign intellectual property protection mode for trade dress"describes legislations, rules and cases about trade dress in Common law, Civil law and international organizations. Common law protects trade dress through anti-unfair competition ragulations and Civil law regards trade dress as an independent business results. Foreign countries'advanced experience could be reference for China's trade dress protection.The third chapter,"China's intellectual property protection mode for trade dress"focuses on the conservation status of China's trade dress and make recommendations. This chapter discusses the current shortcomings in China's law about trade dress protection, and introduces China's academic research of trade dress on two views:Trademark protecting Mode and anti-unfair competition law protecting mode. Finally, the chapter proposes to consider trade dress from the whole legal system of intellectual property rights, improve relevant laws and provide different protection for different kinds of trade dress.