Chapter 7

Trade Dress

More on This Newly Expanding Class of Trademarks

And the First Shall be Last and the Last First? Trade Dress in a Historical Context

An Older Form of Communication Is Revived. The concept of trade dress is not new in the generic sense: that is, as a means of identifying the product of a vendor or the vendor himself or herself by visual cues. In Imperial Roman times, when literacy was the exception rather than the rule, many tradespeople identified themselves by the use of symbols attached to their places of business or by a distinctive mode of dress adopted by members of the trade. Thus, only senators wore purple and the military red. Some of the symbols developed during this period were the surgeon–barber’s red and white ...

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