Technical functionality, secondary meaning and the protectability of 3D shape trademarks

The Court of Rome’s judgment of July 30, 2026, addresses the limits of protection available to three-dimensional trademarks where the shape of a product or its packaging is dictated by technical requirements.

The case concerned the familiar dual-compartment yogurt cup and raised the question of whether such a configuration may benefit from trademark protection despite its functional characteristics and longstanding use by multiple market operators.

The Court reaffirmed that trademark law cannot be used to secure exclusive and potentially perpetual rights over technical solutions that must remain freely available to competitors, also excluding the possibility of overcoming this limitation through acquired distinctiveness.

This article was originally written by the Intellectual Property Observatory team, to which we refer for the whole text.

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