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Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Samara Brothers, Inc., 529 US 205 (2000), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court held that product design trade dress must have acquired secondary meaning in the minds of consumers in order to be protectable under U.S. trademark law. The Court distinguished its earlier opinion in Two Pesos, Inc. vs. Taco Cabana, Inc., which held that product packaging trade dress can be inherently distinctive, i.e. it may be protected without a showing of secondary meaning.

Facts
Samara Brothers, Inc., is a producer of children's clothing, whose products have been distributed through JCPenney, among other stores. In 1995, Wal-Mart sent one of its suppliers photographs of a number of Samara's items, in order to help the supplier produce duplicate items of Samara's garments, many of which contained copyrighted elements. In 1996, Wal-Mart briskly sold the so-called knockoffs, generating more than $1.15 million in gross profits. In June 1996, a buyer for JCPenney called a representative at Samara to complain that she had seen Samara garments on sale at Wal-Mart for a lower price than JCPenney was allowed to charge under its contract with Samara. The Samara representative told the buyer that Samara did not supply its clothing to Wal-Mart. Their suspicions aroused, however, Samara officials launched an investigation, which disclosed that Wal-Mart and several other major retailers— Kmart, Caldor, Hills, and Goody's—were selling the knockoffs of Samara's outfits produced by Judy-Philippine.

After sending cease-and-desist letters, Samara brought this action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York against Wal-Mart, Judy-Philippine, Kmart, Caldor, Hills, and Goody's for copyright infringement under federal law, consumer fraud and unfair competition under New York law, and—most relevant for our purposes— infringement of unregistered trade dress under § 43(a) of the Lanham Act, 15 U. S. C. § 1125(a). All of the defendants except Wal-Mart settled before trial.

Opinion
In the unanimous opinion delivered by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Court held that product design trade dress is highly unlikely to be inherently distinctive, and thus "the game of allowing suit based upon alleged inherent distinctiveness seems to us not worth the candle." Instead, those attempting to register a trademark or bring an infringement lawsuit based on the design of a product must show that such design functions as an indication of source in the minds of consumers. This source-identifying function is referred to as "secondary meaning" or "acquired distinctiveness".