{"id":1564,"date":"2024-06-28T17:51:12","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T17:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/pharrell-williams-louis-vuitton-face-lawsuit-over-pocket-socks\/"},"modified":"2024-06-28T17:51:12","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T17:51:12","slug":"pharrell-williams-louis-vuitton-face-lawsuit-over-pocket-socks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/pharrell-williams-louis-vuitton-face-lawsuit-over-pocket-socks\/","title":{"rendered":"Pharrell Williams & Louis Vuitton Face Lawsuit Over ‘Pocket Socks’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tPharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton are facing a lawsuit over their launch of a high-end line of \u201cPocket Socks,\u201d filed by a California company that says it\u2019s been using that same name for more than a decade on a similar product.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a case filed last week in Los Angeles federal court, Pocket Socks Inc. says the luxury brand\u2019s product \u2014 a literal sock-with-a-pocket that launched at Paris Fashion Week last year and sells for the whopping price of $530 \u2014 infringes its existing trademark rights to the name.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMuch attention and publicity has been generated for Louis Vuitton\u2019s \u2018Pocket Socks,\u2019 including defendants, the press, and consumers using the name \u2018Pocket Socks\u2019 for their product which irreparably injures Pocket Socks\u2019 longstanding brand and trademark rights,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers write in the June 20 complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\tLouis Vuitton announced in February 2023 that Williams would serve as the company\u2019s men\u2019s creative director, and he debuted his first line for the company later that year at Men\u2019s Fashion Week in Paris.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of the items apparently rolled out at last year\u2019s event was the Pocket Socks \u2014 a pair of knitted socks that feature a pocket adorned with a pearl. The socks received some notoriety in January when Jermaine Dupri was razzed on social media for wearing them during his Super Bowl halftime performance. Though currently unavailable for purchase, the socks are listed on Louis Vuitton\u2019s UK website for \u00a3420 \u2014 roughly $530 in U.S. dollars.<\/p>\n

\n\tLouis Vuitton\u2019s new product didn\u2019t sit well with Pocket Socks Inc., which says it\u2019s been using that exact same name since 2012 for its own line of socks that feature a zippered pocket sewn into each pair. In its lawsuit, the company says it owns several federal trademark registrations for the brand and that the new product clearly infringes those rights.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a statement announcing the new lawsuit, Pocket Socks Inc. claims Louis Vuitton\u2019s new line \u201cthreatens to undermine the hard work and dedication\u201d that has gone into building the brand: \u201cThis massive luxury brand and their designer Pharrell Williams should know better and behave within the law,\u201d said CEO Evan Papel<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn technical terms, the lawsuit accuses Williams and Louis Vuitton of infringing both the trademark to the name as well as the so-called \u201ctrade dress\u201d \u2014 meaning the actual look of the product. The sale of similar-looking socks under the same name is \u201clikely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive consumers,\u201d the lawsuit claims.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs the case moves forward, one possible defense argument from Williams and Louis Vuitton could be that the name Pocket Socks is too \u201cdescriptive\u201d to serve as a trademark. Under U.S. trademark law, terms that merely describe the goods or services being sold cannot be locked up as an exclusive brand name.<\/p>\n

\n\tNeither a rep Williams nor Louis Vuitton immediately returned requests for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pharrell Williams and Louis Vuitton are facing a lawsuit over their launch of a high-end line of \u201cPocket Socks,\u201d filed by a California company that says it\u2019s been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1565,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[422,303,2224,473,2226,2227,2225,1258],"class_list":["post-1564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-face","tag-lawsuit","tag-louis","tag-pharrell","tag-pocket","tag-socks","tag-vuitton","tag-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}