Keene Corporation v. Paraflex Industries, Inc., Sim-Kar Lighting Fixtures Co., Inc

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• stating that “[o]ur natural inclination to disapprove of [imitating or copying] must give way to the public policy favoring competition, even by slavish copying, of products not entitled to federal patent protection”
• noting that in evaluating aesthetic functionality courts “focus on the extent to which the design feature is related to the utilitarian function of the product or feature”
• finding it anomalous that the more attractive the mark, the less protection and thus creating a disincentive for development of imaginative and attractive design
• affirming district court’s order requiring only that defendant’s copies of plaintiff’s product be labeled “Made in Taiwan,” and “Not a Product of [Plaintiff]”
• noting that 12-15 alternative designs could be insufficient
• “merely because there are other shapes and designs ‘which defendant could use and still produce a workable’ product, the design used is not thereby non-functional”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).