All the legal protection methods presented in this dossier are applicable to cosmetic product packaging.

While trademark law has the advantage of providing indeterminate protection for the trade sign concerned (subject to regular commercial exploitation for the goods and services concerned), such protection will usually be limited to a specific sector of activity and conditioned by a high degree of distinctiveness.

Patents have the advantage of providing a monopoly on a technical invention for a fixed period of 20 years and the disadvantage of being very expensive.

Copyright and design law provide more comprehensive protection, but limited in time. Moreover, the validation of the ownership of these rights depends on a subjective assessment of the criteria of originality and novelty by the courts, which creates a degree of legal uncertainty unless it can be demonstrated that the form results from a major creative effort.

The choice of legal protection method therefore depends on several factors, namely : - the manufacturer's commercial strategy: classic, innovative, creative ; - the scope of the targeted market: France, Europe, World ; - the financial means of the manufacturer; - the reputation of the products concerned.

Furthermore, legal protection should be adapted to the functionality …