Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/boundvolumes/529bv.pdf
Page Number: 290

529US1

Unit: $U38

[09-26-01 08:44:27] PAGES PGT: OPIN

Cite as: 529 U. S. 205 (2000)

215

Opinion of the Court

interior dining and patio areas decorated with artifacts,
bright colors, paintings and murals,” 505 U. S., at 765 (inter-
nal quotation marks and citation omitted), could be protected
under § 43(a) without a showing of secondary meaning, see
id., at 776. Two Pesos unquestionably establishes the legal
principle that trade dress can be inherently distinctive, see,
e. g., id., at 773, but it does not establish that product-design
trade dress can be. Two Pesos is inapposite to our holding
here because the trade dress at issue, the de´ cor of a restau-
rant, seems to us not to constitute product design.
It was
either product packaging—which, as we have discussed, nor-
mally is taken by the consumer to indicate origin—or else
some tertium quid that is akin to product packaging and has
no bearing on the present case.

Respondent replies that this manner of distinguishing
Two Pesos will force courts to draw difﬁcult lines between
product-design and product-packaging trade dress. There
will indeed be some hard cases at the margin: a classic glass
Coca-Cola bottle, for instance, may constitute packaging for
those consumers who drink the Coke and then discard the
bottle, but may constitute the product itself for those con-
sumers who are bottle collectors, or part of the product itself
for those consumers who buy Coke in the classic glass bottle,
rather than a can, because they think it more stylish to drink
from the former. We believe, however, that the frequency
and the difﬁculty of having to distinguish between product
design and product packaging will be much less than the
frequency and the difﬁculty of having to decide when a prod-
uct design is inherently distinctive. To the extent there are
close cases, we believe that courts should err on the side of
caution and classify ambiguous trade dress as product de-
sign, thereby requiring secondary meaning. The very close-
ness will suggest the existence of relatively small utility in
adopting an inherent-distinctiveness principle, and relatively
great consumer beneﬁt in requiring a demonstration of sec-
ondary meaning.