## Facts

- Bretford manufactured computer tables sold under the “Connections” line, many featuring an end-leg structure with a height-adjustable sleeve attached to a V-shaped brace (a “V-design”).
- From 1990 to 1997, Bretford was the only seller using that V-shaped height-adjustment configuration and sold about 200,000 such tables.
- Smith System, a competitor, decided to use a similar sleeve-and-brace configuration in its own computer tables and first made sales to the Dallas school system in 1997.
- When Dallas requested a sample, Smith System used a repainted leg assembly taken from a Bretford table attached to a Smith System tabletop to create the sample.
- Bretford sued under Lanham Act § 43(a), alleging (1) trade dress infringement based on the V-design and (2) reverse passing off based on the sample table’s use of Bretford hardware.

## Issues

1. Whether the V-shaped sleeve-and-brace configuration constituted protectable product-design trade dress under Lanham Act § 43(a).
2. Whether Smith System committed reverse passing off under Lanham Act § 43(a) by presenting a sample table incorporating a Bretford leg assembly as a Smith System table.

## Decision

- The Seventh Circuit affirmed judgment for Smith System.
- Bretford failed to prove the V-design had secondary meaning as a source identifier; absent protectable trade dress, Smith System could copy the design.
- Smith System’s use of a Bretford leg assembly in a sample did not constitute actionable reverse passing off because the “origin” of goods under § 43(a) concerns the producer of the tangible product sold, not all component sources.

## Legal Principles

- Product-design trade dress is not inherently distinctive; it is protectable only upon proof of secondary meaning that the feature’s primary significance to consumers is identifying source rather than product appearance.
- A plaintiff asserting product-design trade dress must present evidence that consumers associate the design with a single producer (often through survey or comparable proof); mere exclusivity of use and sales volume may be insufficient without source-identification evidence.
- Lanham Act “reverse passing off” requires a material misrepresentation of the origin of tangible goods; “origin” generally refers to the entity that makes or assembles the product placed into commerce, not the creator of the design or a supplier of components.
- Absent patent protection or valid trade dress rights, copying unprotected product configurations is lawful competition.

## Conclusion

The court held that Bretford’s V-shaped table-leg configuration was unprotected product design because Bretford did not prove secondary meaning, and it rejected a reverse passing off theory where the defendant, as the producer of the goods sold, used a plaintiff’s component only in a prototype sample without a legally cognizable misdesignation of origin.


Bretford Mfg., Inc. v. Smith Sys. Mfg. Corp., 419 F.3d 576 (7th Cir. 2005)