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Trade Dress Rights As Instruments Of Monopolistic Competition: Towards A Rejuvenation Of The Misappropriation Doctrine In Unfair Competition Law And A Property Theory Of Trademarks, Apostolos Chronopoulos

Apostolos Chronopoulos

The protection of trade dress restricts the ability of competitors to compete by imitation. It may also interfere with the public’s ability to copy product features that have been disclosed in expired utility and design patents. These concerns about the anticompetitive potential of trade dress claims have prompted the Supreme Court to tighten the requirements for protecting product configurations under the Lanham Act. To be protectable, the design under consideration should have already acquired secondary meaning. Furthermore, the functionality doctrine may bar protection even though there are enough alternative product configurations at the disposal of competitors so as to market …