Adidas hit by EU trademark blow
21/06/2019
The company’s founder, Adi Dassler, first registered the three-stripe logo in 1949. In 2014, adidas was granted a trademark that covered “three parallel equidistant stripes of identical width, applied on the product in any direction” on clothing, hats and shoes.
However, in 2016, Belgian shoe company Shoe Branding Europe applied for this trademark to be annulled. This dispute has been ongoing ever since.
In a statement, the general court of the EU said: "The general court of the EU confirms the invalidity of the Adidas EU trademark, which consists of three parallel stripes applied in any direction. The mark is not a pattern mark composed of a series of regularly repetitive elements, but an ordinary figurative mark."
In response, adidas said it was “disappointed” with the ruling and that it would assess its implications. It added that it did not expect it to have an impact on “the broad scope of protection that Adidas has on its well-known three-stripe mark in various forms in Europe”.
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