Design Protection: An Overview

The dominant concern of the law protecting designs of useful articles has been to keep design and utility separated. The easy recognition of exclusive rights in design, especially when that recognition flows from copyright, creates pressure for recognition of exclusive rights in the articles to which the design is applied, thus inhibiting imitation. Yet our system, in the interest of enhancing competition, allows and indeed encourages imitation, unless the imitated object is entitled to be immunized from copying by qualifying for a copyright, or for a patent, or for protection from competition that is legally considered unfair.'