Legal Research On Trade Dress Legislation

Trade Dress is a kind of new intellectual property concept initially, which now has not been incorporated into the legal system of China. Through a detailed study on our legal system,we can not find out "Trade Dress",but Trademark Law,Pantent Law,Copyright Law and Anti-Unfair Competition Law also provide some protections from different angle. However,such protection which is not systemically complete for the social development and lags behind the tide of international legislation results in duplication and gaps on trade dress because of different standards of protection on diffrernt law.In this paper,the author will introduce the legal system of tradedress in America and Japan. Based on that,combining the legislation and the typical cases in China,this thesis will go on to systematically discuss how to understand and improve the protection on trade dress by Trademark Law and Anti-Unfair Competition Law.First of all,the trade dress is analyized theoretically. The author gives the definition of trade dress in detail. While concluding the origin and definition of trade dress,this chapter abstracts the legal characteristics,the connetions and differences between trade dress ,trade mark and industial designs and elabrates on its theoretical basis and realistic sense.Then,it introduces the reference of protective system of trade dress in America and Japan. The author introduces standards of protection on trade dress in America and analyzes the characteristics of protection on trade dress in America and Japan. And then,the author demonstrated the current protection models of trade dress from the angles of copyright law, patent law, trademark law and anti-undue competition. It discussed some weakness of current protection models of trade dress. At the end of this artical,the author gives some advice on how to use American and Japanese legal system for reference and perfect our relevant legislation concerning trade dress,which is based on analyzing the shortcomings of current protection models in China to protect trade dress. It is pointed out that Trademark Law should play the leading role and Anti-Unfair Competition Law should play complementary role in protecting trade dress.