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	title of this thread your message a complex matter, the two would not end up in court. But the basic principle is this: Models of or for industrially produced products are protected under a specific law that is sometimes (especially in the U.S.) refered to as a patent. It is not a patent under the patent law The patent law is limited to original inventions and a design is not considered an invention. The Alphaville lawyers are correct, any possible protection on the Barcelona chair has expired. But there is something called a trade dress claim. It considers a certain way of doing things, say the rivets on a pair of jeans as a typical part of the product, so typical that it becomes part of the trade mark. This is what Knoll has claimed and actually got registered. The registration as such does not mean anything because if challenged, as it is now by Alphaville, they would have to prouve that there exists in the publics eye, an inevitable link between the Barcelona chair and Knoll. Polaroid managed to do that and kept Kodak out of the instant development business...just before digital cameras overran the problem. Based on the history of the Barcelona chair, Knoll will have a very hard time. First of all they were not the first producers of the Barcelona chair, not even in the U.S. secondly, as Alphaville argues there are zillions of copies and some of them date back several decades. But considering the general protectionist attitude in the U.S. Basically the policy is: We want to have the right to sell to everybody but we will make it as difficult as possible to sell something to us. and given the public's attitude towards the growing importance of China as a manufacturing nation, the juge might very well jump on this opportunity to enlarge even wider the originally very narrow notion of trade dress. We will have to wait and see. Just to be complete, the name Barcelona as related to this chair can and is protected under the copyright law and that expiration date is still decades away. associated web images (optional) associated web link (optional) your email your password create a forums account \| you forgot your password?