There are multiple ways to protect the look of a product using three distinct intellectual property IP laws in the United States: copyright law, trade dress law, and design patent law.
But what is the difference and which is right for your business? This article will explore the various types of protections and where to start when selecting ways to protect your IP. There is a good chance this could be protected under copyright law. However, copyright law does not protect functional elements and it only protects the expression of an idea, not the idea itself.
It is therefore a limited protection that is only available for certain labels and other items. Copyrights are also limited in the scope of their protection. Copyright protection is a limited protection from the unauthorized reproduction of that copyrighted work.
Copyright protection is most powerful when you are trying to prevent others from taking a design and verbatim copying it, such as counterfeiting or piracy. When most people think of patents, they think of unique inventions. Unlike trade dress or copyright, a patent only exists after it has been been approved by a U.
If it meets those standards, the examiner will approve it and the patent will issue. However, with time, the meaning of this term has been expanded. Now, this term refers to both the product design and packaging. When you register your product for a trade dress, you will only be protecting its appearance and not its functionality. That means you will only be protecting how the product looks and feels.
In order for your product to qualify for trade dress protection, you should be able to prove that the aspect of the product that is trademarked has become distinct in the marketplace to begin with. Only then can the trade dress be protected. If the look and feel of your product is so unique that it has distinguished itself from other products in the industry, then you can protect it as a trade dress. To go back to the example of Apple, some aspects of the appearance of Apple products, such as the apple logo, are protected under trade dress protection because that appearance has become distinct and distinguishes apple products from other products in the market.
You can prove the distinctiveness of your product by presenting various pieces of evidence, such as market surveys you have conducted in the past, or some consistent history of your advertising campaigns. Traditionally, protection for tangible products has happened via patent law, where the design of a product would be awarded a patent.
However, such products can also be protected under trademark law via the element of a trade dress. Note, however, that this protection will only cover the non-functional elements of the design of the product that have made it distinguishable and distinct in the marketplace. The only part of the design of a product that you can protect using trademark law is the market significant aspect of its feel and appearance. Anything about how the product functions should be protected by patent law. To take the example of Apple again, they cannot protect the chip design or the software under trademark law.
Anything functional about an iPhone can only be protected with patents. Last updated: December 31, Author - Jessica O'Riordan. Product packaging generally serves two purposes: to protect the product it contains and to make sure the product stands out from others on the shelf.
This often involves a significant amount of investment from a business, but can also give rise to ownership of intellectual property rights which, if protected properly, can offer a significant commercial advantage for a business. Packaging is rarely considered as an element of a business that needs protecting, which leaves broad scope for copying from competitors.
Sometimes a business will use trade marks in order to protect their brand, but rarely will they consider filing protection for product packaging, but it may be an option. Such protection can be afforded to most aspects of packaging, from the name on the front of it, to the way it looks or even, if it is really special, the way it functions. Trade marks do not protect just a brand name. Trade marks can be a useful tool to protect other aspects of packaging such as the wording used on it, or certain designs or characters you might choose to use.
As evidenced by Coca-Cola successfully protecting their signature packaging design by way of trade mark registration, trade marks may also be used in certain cases to protect the shape or outline of a certain product or product packaging. Trade marks offer substantial protection against copying and if you have registered rights it is easier to prove where another company is infringing on your registered rights.
0コメント