I'm not for a wider application of trademark laws with regards to anything. In fact, case law from many European jurisdictions indicate that trademark law is applied too widely - what happens when we no longer know whether something, the same thing (not just the same object, but the exact same feature of that object), is protected both by copyright and a trademark? It means that a company which loses a case on one ground can just go to process again over the exact same thing but indicating a different type of infringement!! In general, the registered rights are good because they are more predictable - maybe this is why the ECJ, for instance, expands trademark law so vividly? When I wrote about design rights for a university course last year I found that actually they're not so useful for industry, and this is probably also proven by the fact that in the Apple/Samsung cases, Apple made simultaneous copyright claims when claiming design right infringements (the court dismissed the copyright claims based on a previous dismissal from an American court, which was not challenged by Apple with regard to EU law).
I'm not for a wider application of trademark laws with regards to anything. In fact, case law from many European jurisdictions indicate that trademark law is applied too widely - what happens when we no longer know whether something, the same thing (not just the same object, but the exact same feature of that object), is protected both by copyright and a trademark? It means that a company which loses a case on one ground can just go to process again over the exact same thing but indicating a different type of infringement!! In general, the registered rights are good because they are more predictable - maybe this is why the ECJ, for instance, expands trademark law so vividly? When I wrote about design rights for a university course last year I found that actually they're not so useful for industry, and this is probably also proven by the fact that in the Apple/Samsung cases, Apple made simultaneous copyright claims when claiming design right infringements (the court dismissed the copyright claims based on a previous dismissal from an American court, which was not challenged by Apple with regard to EU law).