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15 May 2019PatentsKaya Elkiner

Patenting fashion: it’s how you fashion the patent

I can’t remember the exact words, but they were something like: “I doubt you can patent the way a shoe looks, but you may as well have a chat with our patent attorney.”

This was broadly how my meeting with Jennifer Chamandi began, in the spring of 2016. Two years before, Chamandi had quit a seven-year career as a banker at Merrill Lynch to pursue her childhood dream of launching her own line of luxury high-heeled shoes.

She devoted the intervening time to learning about the industry, including taking courses in footwear design and construction. She learned how to speak Italian so she could collaborate better with a leading atelier in Italy. She experimented with various designs and techniques.

Chamandi’s efforts culminated in a beautiful, elegant shoe design that looked quite different from anything I’d seen before. But beauty and aesthetics have no business in the world of patents.

When I mention patents, I mean something that broadly protects how something works, not what it specifically looks like, ie a ‘utility’ patent. Not a registered design or ‘design’ patent.

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