A lot of the products that Rick Owens has turned out since its founding more than 30 years ago have become cult classics for a pool of consumers who aim to emulate the look of the goth-god designer – or any name of the growing list of mega-celebrities that have helped to herald this relatively niche Paris-based fashion brand into the spotlight. Yet, few things quickly signal the Rick Owens brand in all of its glory quite like the “slinky black shirts and drooping trousers” that Owens, himself, wears, along with the $1,000-plus high-top grained calfskin sneakers known as the Geobaskets.
These sneakers, known for their ankle-high upper, oversized tongue, treaded Thermoplastic sole, and wrap-around laces, account for no small portion of privately-owned Rick Owens’ annual revenues, which reportedly amounted to more than $140 million in 2023. At the same time, since the hot-selling sneakers have come to stand out in a competitive market as creations of Rick Owens (a very valuable proposition for a company that largely lacks an easy-identifiable logo), the company is looking to solidify that source-indicating association – albeit not without pushback.

By way of an application that it lodged with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) in August 2022, as first reported by TFL, Rick Owens’ corporate entity Skorpio Limited has been angling to secure a registration for the look and feel of the Geobasket sneaker style. Specifically, Skorpio is claiming rights in a trademark that consists of “a three-dimensional configuration comprising a design of a sneaker with a diagonal line on each side of the lower portion of the sneaker, the back portion being in white with horizontal padding lines and a tall sneaker tongue with vertical padding lines” for use on footwear.
A Final Office Action
Now, after more than two years of back-and-forth between Skorpio Limited and the U.S. trademark office, the company appears to be in the homestretch of its registration-seeking efforts (at least for now). In a final Office action issued by the USPTO in late October 2024, the trademark office called on Skorpio to make some adjustments to its application, namely, to revise the description of the mark and the corresponding design drawing to clearly separate functional from non-functional elements of the sneaker. In the same action, the USPTO’s examining attorney confirmed that previous refusals to register the mark, including on a failure to function basis, have been obviated.
> A Bit of Background: In an earlier round of the trademark examination proceedings, the USPTO preliminarily refused to register Rick Owens’ sneaker-centric mark after finding that the mark “consists of a nondistinctive product design or nondistinctive features of a product design that is not registrable on the Principal Register without sufficient proof of acquired distinctiveness.” Trademark registration-seeking parties may overcome non-distinctiveness refusals by providing evidence of acquired distinctiveness. Skorpio, however, opted for a different approach: It amended its application to seek registration on the Supplemental Register – presumably with the aim of amassing secondary meaning in the shoe-centric mark and seeking registration on the Principal Register at a later date.

Either way, the latest Office action requires Skorpio to address a number of looming issues, including the fact that the trademark drawing provided by Skorpio is not acceptable because it includes functional elements. At the heart of the issue is whether Skorpio’s design elements are purely aesthetic or if they have functional uses, which cannot be protected under trademark law. The USPTO pointed to specific design elements, such as the sneaker’s sole and the bottom of the shoe, as examples of functional components that are essential to the shoe’s use and that must be disclaimed from the scope of the mark by Skorpio as a result.
Citing functional elements from the offerings of brands like Cole Haan and Nike, the USPTO’s examiner noted that “it is common to have a white or solid color band-shaped bottom of a sneaker that serves as the functional sole or bottom of the sneaker.”
While trademark law bars protection of features essential to a product’s use, such as sneaker soles, what Skorpio can claim rights in are the decorative features that contribute to the source-indicating elements of its sneakers that do not serve a purely functional purpose. This includes ornamental elements like contrasting colors and decorative diagonal lines on the sneaker’s sides, which do not impact the shoe’s performance. By separating these non-functional aspects from essential features, Skorpio has a better chance of securing a trademark registration, though the revisions will inevitably limit the scope of protection for the sneaker.
Additionally, the USPTO is calling on Skorpio to amend the description of the mark to align with the updated drawing, removing any references to color, for example, as color does not appear in the drawing, and ensuring that only distinctive, non-functional elements are claimed.
With the final Office action in place, Skorpio has a few options: it can submit a reconsideration request to amend the application according to the USPTO’s requirements, or it can appeal the decision to the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Alternatively, Skorpio may opt for the simpler route of amending the drawing and mark description as requested.
As of this week, Skorpio requested additional time to file a response to the Office action.
Squabbling Over the Geobasket
Not the first time that Rick Owens’ Geobasket sneaker design has been the focus of legal action, the company garnered Nike’s attention back in 2008 when it introduced a slightly different version of the Geobasket sneaker – one that the sportswear titan’s legal department considered to be a bit too similar to existing Nike footwear. In particular, Nike took issue with the Swoosh-like design featured on the side of the sneaker.
As Rick Owens, himself, tells it, his company received a cease-and-desist letter from Nike as a result of the early iteration of the Geobasket, prompting Owens to modify the design, removing points of potential consumer confusion in order to avoid a fully-fledged trademark battle. The result: The Geobasket design for which Rick Owens is currently seeking a trademark registration.