Introduction to Trade Dress Law

The purpose of this lesson is to serve as an introduction to the rapidly growing area of trade dress law. Several new developments have occurred in this area of the law just in the past five years. Most of these developments deal with the correct balance between protecting the freedom of competitors to copy packaging or design features on the one hand and protecting the appearance or physical features of a product when these packaging or design features operate as indications of source on the other. This lesson will go through the definition of trade dress, review protection requirements for registered trade dress, and conclude with protection requirements for unregistered trade dress.