Opinion ID: 3009532
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Trade Dress Law in General

Text: Trade dress originally referred to the packaging or displays associated with trademarked goods. In the leading case of Chevron Chemical Co. v. Voluntary Purchasing Groups, Inc., 659 F.2d 695, 700-02 (5th Cir. 1981), for example, the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the defendant had unfairly competed with the plaintiff by utilizing the same design and colors as the plaintiff for packaging its lawn and garden products, even though the defendant prominently employed a different brand name. That principle of trade dress law grounded in design protection has since been extended to the design of a product itself. Section 43(a) of the Lanham Act proscribes not only trademark infringement in its narrow sense, but more generally creates a federal cause of action for unfair competition. In particular, § 43(a) provides a cause of action for unprivileged imitation, including trade dress infringement [of unregistered trade dress]. American Greetings Corp. v. Dan-Dee Imports, Inc., 807 F.2d 1136, 1140 (3d Cir. 1986) (citations omitted). That is, while it was once well-settled that shapes of products in the public domain may be freely copied, id. at 1145 (citing cases),6 the same no longer holds true, as federal trademark law under the Lanham Act may protect product configurations, see, e.g., Merchant & Evans, 963 F.2d at 633-34; cf. Aromatique, Inc. v. Gold Seal, Inc., 28 F.3d 863, 868 (8th Cir. 1994) (per curiam) (plurality opinion by Morris Sheppard Arnold, J.) (noting that trade dress may now be registered on the Principal Register of the United States Patent and Trademark Office). In Merchant & Evans, we reaffirmed that trade dress protection extends beyond a product's packaging or labeling to include `the appearance of the [product] itself.' Merchant & Evans, 963 F.2d at 633 (quoting American Greetings Corp., 807 F.2d at 1140). The Lanham Act protection of product configurations extends to the total image of a product, including features such as size, shape, color or color combinations, texture, graphics, 6 . See JAMES L. HOPKINS, THE LAW OF TRADEMARKS, TRADENAMES AND UNFAIR COMPETITION § 47 (2d ed. 1905) (It is obvious that if a commercial article itself could constitute a trademark, there would be