Abstract: From the perspective of economic law, this paper adopted the case study method, and combines the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and relevant judicial interpretations. Taking the unfair competition dispute case of Yili v. Mengniu concluded by the Higher People's Court of Jiangsu Province in 2025 as the core sample, it discusses the legal protection of dairy product packaging decoration. The research focused on three practical dilemmas in judicial practice, including the identification of packaging decoration with certain influence, the judgment of packaging similarity, and the discretion of consumer confusion possibility, as well as the ambiguous distinction between general industrial elements and personalized designs.The study found that the protection of dairy packaging decoration should center on the distinctiveness of combined elements. The judgment of similarity shall follow the principle of overall priority and scenario-based comparison, and the identification of confusion possibility needs to be combined with the characteristics of consumer groups and sales channels. Meanwhile, this paper put forward corresponding optimization schemes, such as the identification system of distinctive element combination and the multi-dimensional judgment model of confusion possibility.It is concluded that clarifying the boundary of legal protection can curb unfair competition, reserve space for industrial innovation, achieve a win-win situation among consumer rights protection, enterprise development and market order, and provide theoretical support for judicial adjudication, enterprise compliance management and market supervision.

Key words: economic law, legal protection rule for dairy packaging and decoration, case study method, unfair competition, dairy industry