Notre Dame Law School NDLScholarship Journal Articles Publications 2012 (Dys)Functionality Mark McKenna Notre Dame Law School,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship Part of the Courts Commons, and the Intellectual Property Law Commons Recommended Citation Mark McKenna, (Dys)Functionality, 48 Hous. L. Rev. 823 (2011-2012). Available at: https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/law_faculty_scholarship/623 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Publications at NDLScholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal Articles by an authorized administrator of NDLScholarship. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ARTICLE (DYS)FUNCTIONALITY Mark P. McKenna* TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION...................................823 II. MECHANICAL FUNCTIONALITY AND THE COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE .................................... ...... 824 A. Pre-TrafFix Decisions and the Need to Copy ................ 825 B. TrafFix and the Right to Copy ......... ......... 827 1. Essentialityand Alternative Designs.... ..... 832 2. Essentialityvs. Arbitrary Flourish...... ...... 832 3. Right to Copy vs. Need to Copy, Still.....................833 C. The IntractableBaseline Problem.......... ...... 836 III. AESTHETIC FUNCTIONALITY ............ ............... 843 A. Design Patents and the Competitive Landscape...........843 B. Aesthetic Featuresand Competitive Need.... ..... 848 C. Functional Use and the Duality Problem..... ..... 854 IV. CONCLUSION ................................. ........ 858 I. INTRODUCTION The functionality doctrine serves a unique role in trademark law: unlike virtually every other doctrine, functionality can * Professor, Notre Dame Law School. Thanks to Stacey Dogan for helpful discussions of the ideas in this Article, and to Mark Lemley and the participants at the University of Houston Law Center's Institute for Intellectual Property & Information Law Summer Symposium in Santa Fe for their helpful feedback on an earlier draft.