Study On The Legal Protection Of The Specific Packaging And Decorating Of Well-known Commodities

In the age of economic globalization, the specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodites, with distinctive and non-functional characteritics, as the appearance of a commodity, can be utilized to distinguish the resource of goods and services, highlight the characteristics of goods and services as well as effectively stimulate consumers’ desire for perchasing. Thus packaging and decoration play a decisive role in seizing markets, shaping brands and building goodwill.some unscrupulous operators use the specific packaging and decoration of the known commodities, same or similar ones, without authorization, in order to be able to effectively capture the market share, which makes consumers confused and misidentified to gain unfair economic interests. Such acts of unfair competition seriously damage the economic interests of operators and business reputation, but also harm the interests of consumers.For the unfair competition acts that violate the business ethics and principle of honesty and credit and disturb the market, China has introduced a series of laws and regulations mainly with the Anti-unfair Competition Law and intellectual property law as the core to impose restictions. But the current legislations of our country are quite general and lagged. This paper consists of five chapters describe specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities.Chapter 1 describes the research background and significance of protecting the specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities; Chapter 2 overviews the specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities, starting with the concept, characteristics and identification methods and standards of well-known commodities, then analyzing the concept, characteristics, the property of rights of specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities, especially paying attention to the condition of the three kinds of identification in the "unique character" and finally, defining the scope of protection of unique packaging and decoration of known commodities by comparing the connections and differences among the three intellectual property rights;Chapter 3 briefly introduces some international conventions on the legal protection system of trade dress,and focuses on introducing United States、Japan and provisions in German and French for the protection of specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities. The above laws and provisions act as good references to China in terms of the scope of protection and infringement cognizance;Chapter 4 discusses certain issues about packaging and decoration of well-known commodities. One is the tort identification of specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities, which focuses on identifying infringements in three aspects, using the specific packaging and decoration without authorization, the same or similar ones and the possibility of confusion. At the same time, the author proposes personal recommendations on tort identification the author states two identification exceptions from two aspects, the rationally commercial and non-commercial use;Chapter 5explore ownership rights of specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities in the trademark licensing contract. On the basis of drawing on the United States and Japan’s practices, the author describes the rights of ownership from three points;Chapter 6 Learning from foreign experience on legal protection, the author proposes some advice on how to improve legal protection of specific packaging and decoration of well-known commodities.