Aquazzura vs. Trump. A (scandal) in the fashion world.

Aquazzura is a fashion house founded in 2011 in Florence by the Colombian designer Edgardo Osorio which produces shoes for women and has recently filed a counterfeiting lawsuit against Ivanka Trump and its licensee, Marc Fisher, on charges of copying the design of the "Wild Thing Shoe", a best-selling product of the Florentine company, based, inter alia, on the protection provided by the trade dress institute.

In addition to copyright and trademark protection, U.S. law provides protection for trade dress. Trade dress is an American legal term, as it is not covered by the Lehman Act. Courts have defined it as a set of characteristics of a package or product, which may include size, shape, color, placement, labeling, and graphics.

The protection of a product/service through the trade dress institute presupposes two characteristics that may alternatively exist:

• intrinsic distinctive ability (rather rare);
• distinctive capacity acquired over time thanks to intense use on the market.
• a trademark is intrinsically distinctive if, by its intrinsic nature, it is capable of identifying the company's origin (Wal-Mart case, cit. Two Pesos, Inc. v. Taco Cabana, Inc., 505 United States 763, 768 (1992).

The case is currently pending in federal court in the Southern District of New York.