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Adidas In A Huge Dilemma Over The Three Strips - Trademark Case

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Adidas In A Huge Dilemma Over The Three Strips - Trademark Case

Adidas is one of the most successful sports brands for the past 2 decades. They have been involved in numerous sporting events and have sponsored many top countries and clubs for their jersey and many more players for their accessories, footwear, and even their basic sportswear. They are known to splash their influence to bag magical players with an insane fan base to strengthen their brands.


Their brand has had some challenges from competitors like NIKE and PUMA but with all their disputes they still going strong. But nowadays they face a small downfall with their stocks going down by 1.33% last year and they may lose their iconic trademark of the 3 strips. This article is going to look at the case which came to the European court for the iconic 3 stripe trademark of Adidas.  


Adidas had trademarked their most promoted 3 strips in the year 2014. After this Adidas made more the 10,000 different products involving the 3 strips. This has given a huge upper hand to Adidas over the few years.

But this has become a huge problem for Adidas as many sports brands are using the 3 strips for their products. Adidas didn’t like this, their competitors were using their age-old traditional model to boost up their sales. An American brand called sketcher launched many shoe models with the 3 stripes of Adidas. 21 Forever has been making tracks for many years with the 3 straps Adidas have been trademarking.


Not only them even NIKE and PUMA their direct rivals have made shoes with 3 strips claiming they added a style to their wear. Adidas really didn’t know how to handle it; they knew it was time to hit these cases at the court level. They started with filing a complaint against Belgium’s shoe on the 20th June 2019 which applied for the mark of 2 strips and got rejected because Adidas was using the 3 strips predominantly. But the European Union court has also ruled out the chance of Adidas to have its strips used as well.


They said that the 3 parallel strips are not a very distinct mark as it is a pretty common design and can’t be seen as a mark. This shocked Adidas as they have been using this over the years. This added to the dreadful year Adidas has been having and this is a sure setback. Adidas does have a chance to appeal back on this matter and get the mark back again but still, this is an opportunity for its rivals to make products with the mark and still get away with it claiming it is not extremely distinctive.  


It's hard to be in adidas’s shoes now as they spent decades to immerse the symbol and the mark of its brand into the heads of its buyers. Now saying it can’t save the mark makes it difficult for Adidas to set up its marketing strategy.


Now, what do they do? Do you appeal further for the mark or go for a new mark? Going for a new brand mark is a good idea and it’s not very difficult for Adidas to set up a new distinct brand mark. But it will take a big opening to immerse the mark in the minds of the people, such a launch may drain a lot of money even for a brand of adidas’s standards. It’s better if it sticks to its mark of 3 strips and goes for an extra appeal.

It’s a much easier option than setting up a new mark and making people understand that the mark is theirs. Are you looking to register your catchy mark for your product? Having troubles finding ways to secure just click here and let us handle the legal protection of your marks.


For more info contact us: Unimarks

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