Christian Louboutin, famed creator of well-heeled shoes for well-heeled women, is seeing scarlet since a Manhattan judge recently denied his motion for a preliminary injunction that sought to prevent fashion house Yves Saint Laurent from using the color red on the soles of the shoes in its 2011 “Cruise Collection.” Christian Louboutin S.A. et al. v. Yves Saint Laurent America Inc. et al .
Despite the fact that Louboutin had obtained a trademark for red-soled shoes from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008, Federal Judge Victor Marrero of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York held that the trademark was “unlikely” to be proven valid, even if it had acquired secondary meaning in the minds of consumers, due to the anti-competitive effects of such a monopoly of on a single color.
