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President Donald Trump,
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who, as you know, lost the case in New York and now reportedly owes the state of New York $355 million. I thought I had a bag.
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But yesterday, he introduced his new $400 Golden sneakers. And you think, Well, what’s wrong with that? Well, Pat and Professor John Rizvi, who’s been a guest on this program before, has raised if not a red caution flag, or at least a yellow caution flag Professor Rizvi, welcome back to nightside. Yeah, always a pleasure to be here. And I, what a great segue to you started out talking about the Red Sox. And now we’re talking about red shoes. So undefeated Northeastern team today, seven to two.
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This could be the year.
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Well, in getting back to Trump in his legal battles, unfortunately, he cannot say he’s undefeated, because this has been a horrendous week.
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I don’t know how familiar your listeners are with this. But this this tennis shoe is, is bright, golden, it’s got red, white, and blue. And the problem is that the soul of the shoe is red. And for those that are that follow fashion and are familiar with the that would not be me. But that would not be me, by the way, Professor, so I’ve all ears. Okay, so Christian Lupita on it is their shoe. They’re famous for having a red soul. And they’re typically women’s high heels. And and they aggressively defend their trademark, they obtained the trademark
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way back in 2008. And in fact, they’ve gone to court several times.
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Calling competitors to task or putting a red soul on your shoe. And that’s exactly what President Trump’s new sneaker line has. It has a red soul selling for 399. He launched it. We’ve just last week at a largest sneaker convention in the world sneaker con, and sold out. So there’s a limited edition of 1000 of these that are that are that have been sold. But it’s, you know, for us intellectual property attorneys that focus on protecting ideas and brands. It’s almost as if he’s walking into another possible lawsuit. Yep. So the question is here, and I understand that.
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So they got a patent. This company, which I guess is a big fashion company, what should you say Louis Fatone?
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Christian Lobaton. Christian? Okay. Well, that’s
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to get the two confused often I mean, they both have, there’s a lot of overlap. They both show different types of
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patented worldwide, that no one else can have red colored soles on their on all sorts of footwear, whether it’s women’s high heels, or whether it’s sneakers, or running shoes, or army boots or anything yet, so Well, there’s this limited to women’s high heels in their federal trademark application. And it’s not a patent. It’s a trademark. So they’re protecting the branding. And they were challenged me that trademark was challenged by another fashion brand, Yves Saint Laurent claiming that it should have been invalidated because a single color trademark in their view should not be approved. No single company should have exclusive rights to a color. Unfortunately, the courts did not agree. And there are several trademarks ups, for example, they have rights to the brown. Tiffany’s has that famous royal blue, the Klondike ice cream bars, they have a shade of blue as well. So there’s clearly legal support for trademarks for a color.
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And the question is going to be in this case. One possible defense is that that consumers are not confused between
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Christian Lu baton, you know, women’s high heel with a red soul and Trump’s never surrender high top sneaker that there’s not going to be any confusion. People are not going to feel the companies or brands or you know, somehow get them confused with each other that that’s not going to happen. That’s possible. It depends. Yeah. So let me ask this question. So for example, you said that UPS has the color brown
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Oh, now I assume when we were kids, and you got, you know, a box of 20 Crayons, you had one red, a green, all of that. But the hues on the spectrum of color has to be almost infinite. Correct? I mean, you can have 50 shades of brown, can’t you?
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Yeah. And that’s the that was the argument for some of the companies that are claiming that, Hey, you can’t give a color because we don’t have an unlimited.
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Yeah, I guess we do. You have to give different variations. But the thing is, trademarks are always field specific. So you can, you know, there’s one company that has, for example, a trademark on dove, for chocolate, and a completely different company owns dove for beauty products and making. Okay, so, so short. Brown UPS has brown for delivery type services, but you could certainly have that brown for a completely different product, and it wouldn’t be an infringement. Yeah, I mean, Golden’s mustard could be a brown mustard, for example. So, so it seems to me that that Trump should be okay, here.
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The claim would be, you know, some would say shoes or shoes, and let’s not make a distinction between high top sneakers versus high heels. Okay. Right. And others would, you know, would say, Well, wait a minute, they’re completely different markets, they’re going after a different segment. And they should be considered different products and, and be able to co exist. All right. Well, look, Professor, you have explained it very well. And, and I think you’ve explained the potential pitfalls and also perhaps the the way in which attorneys, trademark attorneys for former President Trump will be able to argue a distinction. As always, you’re one of my favorite guests. Thank you so much for joining us tonight. And have a great week.
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Always a pleasure. Thank you.
