CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN v. YVES SAINT LAURENT AMERICA
778 F.Supp.2d 445 (2011)
United States District Court, S.D. New York.
August 10, 2011.
To answer this question, and recognizing the fanciful business from which this lawsuit arises, the Court begins with a fanciful hypothetical. Suppose that Monet, having just painted his water lilies, encounters a legal challenge from Picasso, who seeks by injunction to bar display or sale of those works. In his complaint, Picasso alleges that Monet, in depicting the color of water, used a distinctive indigo that Picasso claims was the same or too close to the exquisite shade that Picasso declares is "the color of melancholy," the hallmark of his Blue Period, and is the one Picasso applied in his images of water in paintings of that collection. By virtue of his longstanding prior use of that unique tinge of blue in context, affirmed by its registration by the trademark office, Picasso asserts exclusive ownership of the specific tone to portray that color of water in canvas painting. Should a court grant Picasso relief?
Putting aside the thousand technicalities lawyers would conjure and quibble about in arguing why the imagined case is inapposite
or distinguishable from the real controversy before the Court, the example contains some analytic parallels perhaps helpful in resolving this actual dispute. Painting and fashion design stem from related creative stock, and thus share many central features. Both find common ground and goals in two vital fields of human endeavor, art and commerce. For the ultimate ends they serve in these spheres, both integrally depend on creativity. Fashion designers and painters both regard themselves, and others regard them, as being engaged in labors for which artistic talent, as well as personal expression as a means to channel it, are vital. Moreover, the items generated by both painters and fashion designers acquire commercial value as they gain recognition. Louboutin himself would probably feel his sense of honneur wounded if he were considered merely a cobbler, rather than an artiste. But, as a matter differing only in degrees and order of priority, Louboutin and Picasso both may also be properly labeled as men of commerce, each in his particular market.
The creative energies of painter and fashion designer are devoted to appeal to the same sense in the beholder and wearer: aesthetics. Both strive to please patrons and markets by creating objects that not only serve a commercial purpose but also possess ornamental beauty (subjectively perceived and defined). Quintessentially, both painting and fashion embrace matters of taste. In consequence, they share vicissitudes natural to any matter of palate or palette. They change as the seasons change. Styles, features, whole lines come and go with passing likes and dislikes, to be replaced by new articles with origins from regions where genius charts a different course. Items fall in and out of fashion in all nuances of the word, conveying not only currency but seasonality and transience. Perhaps capturing something of that relative inconstancy, painting and fashion share a vocabulary. They speak in ethereal terms like fanciful, inventive, eccentric, whimsical, visionary, and, to quote Louboutin again, "engaging, flirtatious" (Mourot Decl. Ex. C (Docket No. 22-7) ¶ 3)—all words which also have in common an aim to evoke and affect things of the moment.
These creative means also share a dependence on color as an indispensable medium. Color constitutes a critical attribute of the goods each form designs. Alone, in combinations, in harmonious or even incongruous blends, in varying patterns and shapes, the whole spectrum of light serves as a primal ingredient without which neither painting nor fashion design as expressive and ornamental art would flourish. For, color depicts elemental properties. As it projects expression of the artist's mental world, it captures the mutability, the fancy, the moods of the visual world, in both spheres working as a means to execute singular concepts born of imagination for which not just any other shade will do. Hence, color in this context plays a unique role. It is a feature purposely given to an article of art or design to depict the idea as the creator conceived it, and to evoke an effect intended. In ornamenting, it draws attention to itself, and to the object for which its tone forms a distinct expressive feature. From these perspectives, color in turn elementally performs a creative function; it aims to please or be useful, not to identify and advertise a commercial source.
But, as an offshoot of color, perhaps most crucial among the features painting and fashion design share as commerce and art, are two interrelated qualities that both creative fields depend upon to thrive, and indeed to survive: artistic freedom and fair competition. In both forms, the greatest
range for creative outlet exists with its highest, most vibrant and all-encompassing energies where every pigment of the spectrum is freely available for the creator to apply, where every painter and designer in producing artful works enjoys equal freedom to pick and choose color from every streak of the rainbow. The contrary also holds. Placing off limit signs on any given chromatic band by allowing one artist or designer to appropriate an entire shade and hang an ambiguous threatening cloud over a swath of other neighboring hues, thus delimiting zones where other imaginations may not veer or wander, would unduly hinder not just commerce and competition, but art as well. The thrust and implications of the Court's analogy are clear. No one would argue that a painter should be barred from employing a color intended to convey a basic concept because another painter, while using that shade as an expressive feature of a similar work, also staked out a claim to it as a trademark in that context. If as a principle this proposition holds as applied to high art, it should extend with equal force to high fashion. The law should not countenance restraints that would interfere with creativity and stifle competition by one designer, while granting another a monopoly invested with the right to exclude use of an ornamental or functional medium necessary for freest and most productive artistic expression by all engaged in the same enterprise.
1. The factual summary below is derived from the following documents: Plaintiff's Amended Memorandum of Law in Support of Application for a Preliminary Injunction, dated June 21, 2011, and any exhibits and declarations attached thereto; Defendants/Counterclaim-Plaintiffs' Memorandum of Law in Opposition to Motion for Preliminary Injunction, dated July 12, 2011, and any exhibits and declarations attached thereto; and Plaintiff's Reply Memorandum of Law in Support of Application for a Preliminary Injunction, dated July 19, 2011, and any exhibits and declarations attached thereto. The Court will make no further citations to these sources unless otherwise specified.
2. Jennifer Lopez, Louboutins (Epic Records 2009).
3. "Cruise" in this context refers to the fashion season between winter and spring, which is sold in stores beginning in November of each year. (Vaissié Decl. (Docket No. 34) ¶ 11.)
4. Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass 195 (Karen Karbiener ed., 2004). The text from which this passage derives (italics in the original) reads:
A child said What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands
....
... I guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord, A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt, Bearing the owner's name someway in the corners, that we may see and remark and say Whose?
5. The TEXTILE color system assists designers in selecting and specifying color to be used in the manufacture of textiles and apparel. In 2003, the TEXTILE color system was replaced with the FASHION + HOME color system, and the suffix of each color was changed from "TP" to "TPX."
6. Louboutin's suggestion that the Court require other designers to stay some percentage away from Chinese Red raises the question: some percentage of what? Chinese Red, like any color, is made up of a certain combination of other colors. Based on the Court's research, this combination can be expressed in various metrics, such as a combination of RGB (red, green, blue) or CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black), or HSB (hue, saturation, brightness). See Mark Galer & Les Horvat, Digital Imaging: Essential Skills 3-5, 7 (3d ed.2005). In Adobe Color Picker, see id. at 6, a variance of just 10 percent in any of these inputs, in either direction, yields more than a dozen shades visibly different from Chinese Red, in some cases so different as to appear to the casual observer pink on one side of Chinese Red or orange on the other.
7. In response to YSL's inquiry as to whether a particular YSL shoe infringes the Red Sole Mark, Christian Louboutin responded at his deposition that he "will think about it." (Hamid Decl. Ex. A (Docket No. 32-1) at 60:11-14.) In response to YSL's inquiry as to whether Christian Louboutin would "object to any shade of red on a sole," counsel for Christian Louboutin instructed him not to answer. (Id. at 46:4-18 (emphasis added).)
8. The Court notes that Louboutin's claim for unlawful deceptive acts and practices, although not a basis for its motion for a preliminary injunction, similarly would fail in this context. See R.D. Corp. v. Jewelex New York Ltd., ___ F.Supp.2d ___, ___, No. 07 Civ. 13, 2011 WL 1742111, at *5 (S.D.N.Y. May 4, 2011) (dismissing claim for unlawful deceptive acts and practices under New York General Business Law § 349 because it arose out of a dispute between competitors involving trademark infringement).