The law-and-fashion news.

"Designer Christian Louboutin can claim trademark protection for the red outsole on his women's shoes, but not if the rest of the shoe is also red, a federal appellate panel ruled yesterday, allowing rival Yves Saint-Laurent to continue selling an entirely red shoe."

Louboutin's iconic high-end, red-soled shoes, introduced in 1992, have been spotted on celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker, Victoria Beckham and Rihanna. The shoes sell for up to $1,000 a pair.

YSL's shoes are entirely red, including their outsoles, and are part of a line of similarly monochrome shoes, also in purple, green and yellow....

[The district judge had said] that a color, being an essential element of fashion design, could not be trademarked, despite the strong connection in the public mind between red soles and Louboutins. The judge compared the suit to Pablo Picasso suing Claude Monet to assert a trademark for a particular shade of blue....

However, the [appellate] panel found that the "evidentiary record further demonstrates that the Louboutin mark is closely associated with contrast," not just the red color, and that the trademark must be narrowed to cover only situations where the red sole of a shoe contrasts with a differently colored upper part.

So maybe you can have a trademark in a particular color. (I note that Tiffany, which has a particular shade of blue, filed an amicus brief supporting Louboutin.) But Louboutin didn't own red or even red soles. What distinctively said Louboutin was red soles contrasting to the rest of the shoe.

The Louboutin side of the argument thus won something important upsetting the trial judge's per se rule against fashion-industry trademarks in a color.