Crocs tangled up in trade dress suit
Moulded footwear company Crocs has found itself at the centre of a dispute over trade dress and computer fraud.
USA Dawgs sued Crocs on Thursday, July 27 at the US District Court for the District of Nevada, alleging that the brand had copied one of Dawgs’s sandals.
Nevada-based Dawgs said it had developed, manufactured and sold a “distinct Z-shaped upper” for sandals that is intended to fit over the top of a wearer’s foot and look like a “Z”.
“After Dawgs spent several years promoting these unique sandals, building its brand, and had sold well over one million pairs in the US, Crocs intentionally copied Dawgs’s ‘Z Sandal’”, said the claim.
Crocs’s ‘ Women’s Swiftwater Sandal’ is confusingly similar, according to Dawgs.
That’s not all—Crocs, and three of its employees, has been accused of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “in an intentional and successful effort to deprive Dawgs of sales of its products”.
Dawgs claimed that a Croc employee who had formerly worked at e-commerce platform Zulily had accessed its private account and sought to have Zulily cancel Dawgs’s sales promotion, which Zulily allegedly did.
The Nevada-based company said that the “only possible way Crocs could have obtained access to Dawgs’s sales event was by hacking into Dawgs’s private password protected vendor portal or employing some other dishonest means”.
It is seeking triple damages, a permanent injunction, attorneys’ fees and costs, and a jury trial.
A spokesperson for USA Dawgs said the company “believes in its product offerings and in legal and fair competition”.
They added that Crocs has used its size to “threaten and suppress” smaller competitors.
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