Adidas has filed a lawsuit against Thom Browne, an American luxury fashion house, for trademark infringement. The former has claimed that Browne’s use of parallel stripes violates its trademarked three-stripe branding.
According to reports, Adidas filed a lawsuit against Browne in June 2021, claiming that the latter’s four-stripe designs are confusingly similar to the company’s three-stripe mark and violate the company’s trademark.
It argued that, despite Thom Browne’s knowledge of its rights in the famous three-stripe mark, the fashion house’s product offerings have expanded far beyond its formal wear and business attire speciality.
It was claimed that Browne is now selling athletic-style apparel and footwear with two, three, or four parallel stripes that are confusingly similar to Adidas’ three-stripe mark.
Adidas also claimed that Browne was profiting from the logo’s similarity and gaining the widespread fame, tremendous public recognition, and extremely valuable goodwill that Adidas has built through millions of dollars of promotional marketing.
According to Women’s Wear Daily, Adidas’ attorney R Charles Henn Jr of Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP, Adidas is seeking USD 867,225 in damages for would-be licensing fees and an additional USD 7 million in profits from products with stripes.
According to CNN, lawyers for Thom Browne have argued that Adidas took an unreasonable amount of time to assert its claims.
As per, court documents, products bearing the Four-Bar Signature were first sold in 2009 and were displayed on activewear at the fashion brand’s flagship New York store beginning in 2010.
The sportswear behemoth claims it only became aware of the alleged infringement in early 2018, when Thom Browne applied to trademark the ‘Grosgrain Signature’ in Europe. Adidas’ lawyers contend that the company was under no obligation to monitor Thom Browne’s output and did not initially regard the label as a direct competitor.
