Trade Dress is a type of trademark that protects the overall look and feel of a product or its packaging. It’s the brand’s persistent visual identity.
- What it Protects: Elements like a product’s distinctive shape, size, color combination, texture, or even the layout of a retail store (think the distinctive look of a Hard Rock Cafe). The iconic, curvy shape of the Coca-Cola bottle is the textbook example of protected trade dress for product packaging.
- The Power: If it successfully identifies the source of your goods to consumers, protection can last indefinitely, as long as you continue to use and defend the mark.
- The Catch: It must be Non-Functional (it can’t be required for the product to work better), and for product design itself, it must have Acquired Distinctiveness (Secondary Meaning). This means you have to prove to the USPTO that customers associate that unique shape only with your brand. This takes years of marketing and sales.
Intellectual property is one of your most powerful business tools. If you’re ready to build a strong brand and protect what you create, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
I help entrepreneurs across the U.S. make smart, legally sound decisions about their intellectual property. I’m an attorney in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, but I serve intellectual property clients nationwide.
Ready to protect your work? Book a consultation online at kingpatentlaw.com or call 217-714-8558.
For more information on intellectual property and business law, check out the other posts on this site, listen to my podcast “Spellbinding IP: Patent, Trademark, and Business Strategy” on all major podcast platforms (video available on YouTube, Spotify, and Substack), or follow me on social media at @kingpatentlaw.
Avoid the legal horrors, and keep rocking your IP.
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