Overview
Many of our clients have unique product designs that enable them
to stay on top of the market and achieve huge commercial success.
However, while enjoying the fruits of their creativity, they are
also tasting the bitter part of success-they are highly plagued by
various copycats in the industry who produce "look-alike"
version of product designs with only minor changes and then steal
away market shares and customers.
Under the current IP laws and anti-unfair competition laws of
China, product designers/creators might, according to the specific
circumstances, choose to protect their product design via design
patent if their design has not been commercialized so as to lose
novelty, or 3D trademark if they are able to prove the
distinctiveness of a 3D shape and overcome the functionality
obstacle.1 The other alternative is that product
designers/creators might choose to initiate a lawsuit against the
copycats under unfair competition claims if hopefully they
