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22 September 2015Trademarks

Stan Smith shoe sparks Adidas v Skechers IP row

Adidas has accused rival Skechers of selling products that infringe the trade dress of its Stan Smith and Supernova line of shoes, as well infringing its “well-known” three-stripe trademark.

In a lawsuit filed at the US District Court for the District of Oregon, Adidas claimed that Skechers is selling a line of shoes that have a similar design to its own Stan Smith and Supernova designs.

“Skechers’s actions are irreparably harming Adidas’s brand and its extremely valuable Adidas marks,” the complaint said.

Adidas launched the Stan Smith shoe in the 1970s.

Named after former US tennis player Stan Smith, the shoe, according to the complaint, is a “classic” tennis design with a “raised mustache-shaped coloured heel patch”.

On the side of the shoe there are perforations in the shape of Adidas’s “well-known” three-stripe trademark.

According to the complaint Skechers “recently launched” its own shoe called the Onix. The shoe contains also perforations on the side, but in the pattern of five stripes.

In its complaint Adidas said the Onix is a “knock-off” and is evidence of Skechers’s “bad-faith intent” to imitate the Stan Smith trade dress.

Skechers, according to Adidas, has also launched another range of shoes that have “substantially identical imitations” to Adidas’s Supernova range, launched in 1998.

Adidas has also claimed that Skechers’s sale and distribution of the allegedly infringing products is in breach of an agreement between the two parties called the 1995 agreement.

The agreement was reached after Adidas filed a trademark lawsuit against Skechers concerning another act of alleged infringement.

Both parties settled the dispute on the understanding that Skechers agreed not to use any confusingly similar marks, according to Adidas.

However, since then both parties have faced off four times over Skechers’s alleged infringement of the three-stripe design. All of those disputes ended in confidential agreements.

In the lawsuit, filed on September 14, Adidas said the latest dispute is the most “egregious”.

The complaint said: “Skechers has shown a callous disregard for Adidas’s trademark and trade dress rights, as well as for the numerous agreements Skechers has entered into with Adidas.

“Skechers thus has acted in bad faith, with malicious intent, and in knowing disregard of Adidas’s rights.”

Adidas has demanded triple damages to reflect Skechers’s “knowing and intentional use of the Adidas marks”.

A spokesperson for Adidas told WIPR that it filed the lawsuit to protect its valuable intellectual property and put an end to a “long-term pattern of unlawful conduct by Skechers”.

“We believe Skechers’s unlawful behaviour, which also includes misappropriation of Adidas’s Supernova and three-stripe trademarks, needs to stop now,” the spokesperson added.

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More on this story

Trademarks
17 February 2016   A US court has ordered Skechers to stop selling three lines of shoes which Adidas has accused of infringing the trade dress of its Stan Smith brand.