Law Commons^™

Following The Direction Of Traffix: Trade Dress Law And Functionality Revisited, Amy B. Cohen

Faculty Scholarship

For much of American history, in order to promote competition among the producers of useful products, the law did not grant protection to the design of such products unless the design met the demanding requirements for patent or copyright protection. In the 1980s, an expansion of trade dress law resulted in protection of product designs, with the courts relying primarily on the functionality doctrine to preserve the interest in competition. The functionality doctrine, however, riddled by ambiguity and conflicting interpretations, was not effective in preventing overly broad protection of the designs of useful products. As a result, more and more …