In 2011, the prominent women\u2019s shoe designer Christian Louboutin took fashion competitor Yves Saint Laurent to court to protect a trademark of Louboutin\u2019s red-lacquered shoe sole design. To the industry\u2019s surprise, the district court ruled that an entity in the fashion industry could never trademark a single-color feature because the use of a single color would always be functional in fashion. In 2012, the Second Circuit overruled the district court, stating that, in theory, a fashion designer could trademark a single-color feature. However, the court modified Louboutin\u2019s trademark to protect only red soles that contrast with the color of the remainder of the shoe, thus absolving Yves Saint Laurent\u2019s monochromatic design from the trademark infringement claim. This Recent Development analyzes the Second Circuit\u2019s ruling that left Louboutin\u2019s trademark intact for now but fell short of settling the issue of whether single-color trademarks in fashion can coexist with the aesthetic functionality doctrine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2011, the prominent women\u2019s shoe designer Christian Louboutin took fashion competitor Yves Saint Laurent to court to protect a trademark of Louboutin\u2019s red-lacquered shoe sole design. To the industry\u2019s surprise, the district court ruled that an entity in the fashion industry could never trademark a single-color feature because the use of a single color …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,93,53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6628,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1692\/revisions\/6628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.unc.edu\/ncjolt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}