Are you the owner of a brand, company or organisation with a logo featuring three-stripes? In case you are, you should get worried as Adidas may be after you. After sueing fashion designer Thom Browne for his use of stripes, Adidas has indeed targeted Black Lives Matter.
Fighting racism and violence against the Black community and rising to attention after the death in 2012 of unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin shot by a neighbourhood watch volunteer, and then gaining more support after the brutal killing of George Floyd, murdered by a police officer in 2020, the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation used on a variety of products (clothing, bags, mugs and so on), a yellow three-stripe design.
The group applied for a federal trademark for this logo in November 2020. But, on Monday, Adidas requested the US Trademark Office to reject the application for a trademark featuring three parallel yellow stripes, claiming it could mislead the public and create confusion with its own famous three-stripe mark.
According to the court filings made on March 27th: Adidas has priority in the "Three-Stripe" trademark and "consumers will believe that the goods and services offered under BLM's trademark are associated with or sponsored by Adidas." The brand also claimed that "the goods and services offered by BLM under its proposed trademark are identical to or highly related to Adidas's offerings," and that, if BLM's trademark is approved, it will materially harm Adidas "by eroding consumers' exclusive identification of the three-stripe mark with Adidas."
Today, though, Adidas backtracked without explanation and decided to withdraw the request, but this seems to be the best choice considering that in this case the company may not prevail in court. Graphically, there are some differences regarding the orientations and colours of the stripes, but there is also a precedent, created by this year's trial against Thom Browne.
In 2021, the German sportswear giant filed suit in a New York court against the American designer. The brand claimed that Browne's "Four Bar Design", mainly employed around calves, thighs, and upper arms on his garments, was a trademark infringement and a dilution of Adidas' three-stripe parallel mark, a staple of the brand since the 1940s. As a consequence, Adidas sought injunctive relief and damages allegedly stating that Browne was generating confusion in consumers. In that case the lawsuit claimed: "Thom Browne sportswear and footwear feature three and four stripes in ways that adidas claims is likely to deceive, confuse, and mislead actual and prospective purchasers of adidas’s merchandise".
Adidas lost its credibility in that lawsuit, though, since, over 10 years ago, when it came to the attention of the brand that Browne was using a red, white and blue three-striped trademark, the German sportswear company approached Browne's then chief executive officer and suggested that the designer added a fourth stripe to avoid confusion with Adidas' products. The fourth stripe was agreed in 2007 and first appeared in 2008. Adidas did not object the use of the four stripes in Browne's garments until 2021 when, considering maybe Browne's successes, it decided to file suit. The case closed this year in January when a jury of eight declared that the designer did not infringe on any of Adidas' trademarks and was therefore not liable for damages or profits made selling products with four stripes.
Maybe Adidas may have done the same with BLM, asking the foundation to alter the three stripes, rather than aggressively going against it and then backtrack almost immediately.
Yet, Adidas' modus operandi has often been sueing rather than discussing: during the Thom Browne trial it was heard that Adidas filed more than 90 lawsuits and signed more than 200 settlement agreements related to the three-stripe trademark since 2008 (the company filed suit against Ralph Lauren in 2014, Marc Jacobs in 2015, Forever 21 in 2017, Puma in 2017 and J.Crew in 2019, just to mention a few), something that proves not just that Adidas is ready to fiercely protect its stripes but that its obsession is getting out of hand and may be alienating consumers.
As noted in previous posts, stripes, a pattern used since the Middle Ages, as proved by frescoes in Medieval churches, have always been a pattern of contention: stripes led indeed to some complex trademark infringement cases in the last few years between different brands such as Off-White, Paige and Helly Hansen.
Who knows, maybe, as the pattern is very fashionable for the next season, we will see Adidas' legal team avidly counting stripes and possibly attempting to sue other brands. But maybe it would be better for them if they stopped their aggressive litigation strategies and took care of the savvy consumers they may be alienating.
Comments