Trade dress protection on the overall appearance of stores in Thailand

Abstract

The design of the appearance of stores has significantly become a crucial factor for the places in which the products and services are provided. It is an important meeting point where manufacturers and service providers meet consumers. Not only provide goods or services, but the appearance of stores also serves a good experience and represents the brand identity to the consumers. A good design of the overall appearance of stores could make the visitors remember and differentiate the certain store from another. In order to establish one unique store, a lot of effort and investment are needed to be made. Consequently, the company must not want any competitor to easily grab the successful stores’ overall appearance that they did a lot of research on by simply copying it. The state should, therefore, grant protection on the overall appearance of stores.The United of States is the country that firstly provides protection to the overall appearance of stores. The main purposes are to protect the consumers from misleading the counterfeit stores and to provide fair protection to the business operators. The protection is provided under trademark doctrine and legally recognized as ‘trade dress’. Trademark is a legal regime that provides a protection over store design because trade dress plays the same features as trademark does. That is, it is capable to distinguish the products or services in which it provided from others’ products and services provided in another store. Additionally, it also plays as a source identifier as same as a traditional trademark does. Thus, trademark features are applied. Germany is another country that also provides protection to the overall appearance of stores under trademark concept, as a 3D trademark. While, the Republic of Korea, differently protects the overall appearance of stores on the unfair competition approach. Although the three countries that are examined in this paper protect the store appearance with different approaches, the store's design is supported by these countries. Thailand, currently, has no specific provision in order to protect the overall appearance of stores. The best possible option is trademark. However, although the overall appearance stores play a role as trademark does, it does not fall into the definition of the mark under the Trademark Act. Therefore, the owner cannot exploit any benefits or rights provided under the act. This research aims to find the possibility that can provide protection over the overall appearance of stores in Thailand. The foreign countries, namely, the United States, Germany and the Republic of Korea as earlier explained will be examined. Accordingly, it is important to amend the relevant provisions of Trademark Act in order to cover the protections of the overall appearance of stores.