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Comment by devin | Hacker News Reader

That still seems like a reach to me. IANAE, but it's hard to imagine someone calling a neon green polyester suit "trade dress".

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There's plenty of precedent. For example, red soled high-heel shoes:

https://money.cnn.com/2018/06/12/news/christian-louboutin-ec...

Wow, what an overreach. I'm surprised they won.

I hope this EU ruling is not applied in the US.

is it really such an overreach when the detail is so strongly associated with their brand that Louboutin shoes are often informally called "red bottoms"?

yes, its an overreach that they should be able to demand and expect the state to protect their inane detail as though that has any value to society or the economy.

a system optimized for rent seeking on the color red is overreaching.

Thankfully, Friend Computer just promoted me to Red Clearance so I'm allowed to have those shoes.

Should the Nike Swoosh be protected?

“Red Bottoms” was in the chorus of a song that was a #1 for three weeks in 2017 (Bodak Yellow by Cardi B). Since you seem to be unaware of this “inane” detail that is a big part of current American culture, perhaps you should lay off on passing judgement.

The popularity of it doesn’t affect whether it is or is not inane and whether it is or is not morally right to protect with state power.

I don't see the comment as judgement passing. Instead, it is a rather important economic observation. A tiny bit of red on a piece of apparel shouldn't be intellectual property, be it a part of American culture or not (I wouldn't dare on speculating how big a part of the culture it is). Rent seeking behaviour on this patch of red is not beneficial to the human race in any readily apparent way and is detrimental due to it being yet another precedent for the ever-growing, soul-sucking, innovation-stifling scope creep of IP.

Well reasoned; and perhaps we should mobilize the U.S. Army to protect the concepts and themes central to the next Lil' Wayne single.

In this case it seems that the courts are ruling in favor of what the legislators didn't want to happen. Fashion is intentionally not subject to copyright.

Hyacinthe Rigaud's famous 1701 painting of Louis XIV clearly shows Quatorze wearing red, high-healed shoes. Why doesn't that bounder, Christian Louboutin, go and sue the sun king's ghost? Or is that not how prior art works?

The intent of the red sole infringer was to make people think they were Louboutin. It wasn’t red soles for red soles’ sake: it was to intentionally dilute (or piggy-back upon) the Louboutin Design. Just like someone calling a restaurant MacDonalds instead of McDonald’s.

Louboutin's application specifies high-heeled shoes with red soles, ie. the colour of the rest of the shoe is irrelevant. The painting shows high-heeled shoes where the irrelevant part is reddish and the relevant part isn't shown. IANAL and not sure whether it could be relevant if&when, but as it stands it's plainly irrelevant.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/Louis_XI...

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