adidas wins EU court case over three-stripe branding

The court decided that adidas could defend its iconic design.

A European court has ruled in favour of sportswear producer adidas in a case concerning alleged design infringement. The German company had sought to block two trademarks featuring parallel stripes that were planned by a Belgian shoemaker, claiming that their use would be an infringement of adidas’ three-stripe design.

According to the Luxembourg-based General Court – Europe’s second-highest legal body – the use of the marks for which the Belgian company had applied would take unfair advantage of the reputation of adidas’ branding. The court also concluded that due cause for the use of the marks had not been demonstrated by the Belgian shoemaker. This new court decision reaffirmed earlier rulings handed down by the European Union Intellectual Property Office.

The three parallel stripes have been jealously-guarded trademark branding used by adidas since at least 1949, when a design for sports shoes incorporating the stripes were registered. In fact, founder Adi Dassler was often known to describe it as ‘the three-stripe company’.

With such a simple yet powerful brand image, similar designs were always likely to exist. adidas has never been afraid to bring legal cases against sporting organisations and competitors in an attempt to establish its clear right to use the three stripes branding. As with the Belgian company described above, these cases have often concerned two-stripe branding, some of which have been upheld by the courts in adidas’ favour, with others being rejected as providing insufficient evidence that intellectual property had been infringed.

Publishing Data

This article was originally published on page 3 of the April 2018 issue of SATRA Bulletin.

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