A Study on Retail Store Design Protection from the Aspects of Intellectual Property Law

It is without doubt that store design becomes more and more important. In addiction to attract people to buy the product since they still are outside the store, it is also a critical way to express their own brand proposition. When it comes to the most successful company combined their product with the store design, you could not miss Apple. Apple store’s design acquires several registration protections such as patents and trademarks in America. Besides, Apple has started their process obtaining intellectual property right of Apple store all over the world. To sum up, getting an intellectual property right on store design becomes a hot issue now. The article will focus on how do companies acquire intellectual property right on their store design through different areas by covering American laws, Euro laws and Taiwan laws. Besides, more details such as protection of subject matter, protection scope, and infringement determination in patents, copyright, trademark and unfair competition will be discussed. The ultimate goal of this thesis is that come up with the best protection strategy of intellectual property right in store design.