Trade dress is defined as visible appearance of a product or packaging of a product, which do no necessarily forms the part of the Trademark, however, becomes a critical aspect to cause confusion amongst the public. Trade dress with respect to a trademark has relevance to its get up, visual appearance, visual presentation, first look appearance, which one may associate on first glance towards the product.

There have been many occassion in commerical IP dispute where similarity of labels was alleged and the dispute was decided basis upon comparison of labels by the Courts. If the essential feature of the trade dress of a website is copied, the aggrieved party can injunct and press for damages from the party in conflict.

One school of though is that, the concept of trade dress is covered under the Trademark Law and other school of thought is that, it is covered under the Copyright Law.

In Himalaya Drugs Company Vs Sumit 2006 (32) PTC 112 (Del), the arrangement of features on the plaintiff’s website and in particular, the section relating to “Himalaya Herbs” including the layouts, placements on details, getup and the “look and feel” cumulatively constitute a “Trade Dress”.

The very recent case of infringement of Trade Dress is launch of Threads.net by Meta Corp, which predominantly and visually it appears that, Threads.Net copies the Trade Dress of Twitter.Com.

Concept of Look and Feel

The first look of the both apps make it clear that, the Threads App have copied the Trade Dress of Twitter App. The concept of “Retweet” is reschrisened as “Reposted”. The chronology of buttons are rearranged by the Threads vis a vis Twitter app. However, all keys buttons are retained by the Threads app.