On Legal Protection Of The Trade Dress

Trade dress is originating from the United States, and is a symbol of the difference between product sources. With the development of the society, trade dress gradually enters into the public’s view. Compared with large amount of case laws in U.S., currently China’s legal system is established without a clear definition of connotation and denotation of trade dress, which is generally protected under the intellectual property law system to provide three-dimensional trademarks, product packaging, product packaging services and packaging with the identification aspects of business such as legal protection. From the perspective of the trademark law of the protection of the commercial appearance of the main base on the protection of a registered trademark. Commercial appearance when applying for trademark registration, because our country the protection of trademark law of the commercial appearance condition is unclear, participate in commercial appearance is obtained under the condition of a registered trademark of the trademark law, the court and the trademark office for business is involved and scope of the problem such as how to define, because the relevant laws and regulations of fuzzy relatively cautious attitude, won the commercial appearance of the registered trademark protection are numbered.This paper is divided into three parts:The first chapter introduction. First include commercial appearance characteristics, and analysis the commercial appearance with common trademarks, patent of appearance design, concept of practical works of art such as the adjacent; And then introduces the status quo, China’s commercial protection to trademark law and anti-unfair competition law, combining the problems existing in the legislation and practice, and the two conflicts and contradictions that exist in the real system.The second part is on the Trademark Law protection. The Trademark Law protection contains two aspects: the trademark registration and preventing the infringement of trademarks. First of all, the paper will discuss the conditions of application for trademark registration: such as the non-functional condition and the significant condition. Secondly, because of the particularity of the appearance of the commodity trademark, the judgment of the trademark infringement should be clear, so the paper will discuss the similar trademark judgment standards and the confusion standards. The second phase is on the Anti Unfair Competition Law protection of the trade dress. Anti-unfair competition law of commercial appearance legislative cases mainly divides into the common law to prevent the protection of the relevant public confusion, and in the European Union, for example for the protection of the business results. Although at present, the protection of commercial appearance is limited to the specific products and services of well-known products packaging, packaging protection, are based on the commercial appearance of the role of market confusion with logo but for protection. In this paper, starting from the regulation of our country anti-unfair competition law, anti-unfair competition law on the protection of the commercial appearance condition.The fourth part points out the framework of protection in China. Core is based on China’s current laws on the protection of the commercial appearance the status quo, against the current legal system to protect commercial appearance defects, to put forward to protect the commercial appearance of the trademark law in China and the improvement, hope for commercial appearance identification function to provide more comprehensive and the system of legal protection.