Source: BBC News

After a long legal battle, the fashion designer Thom Browne obtained a favorable resolution in a trademark infringement lawsuit against Adidas. It should be recalled that since the beginning of his career, the American designer had used stripes in college sweatshirts, which had been made without thinking of resembling Adidas; however, in 2007 the sports company contacted him, so the designer changed to four parallel stripes.

Years after this controversy, Adidas took legal actions and in 2018 sued Thom Browne for damages and loses, claiming that the stripes in Browne’s design “mimicked” its own brand, invoking its Three-Stripe trademark.

In turn, Browne argued that consumers were unlikely to confuse the two marks as, among other reasons, his trademark had a different number of stripes, as Browne’s designs typically feature four parallel horizontal stripes encircling the arm of a garment.

Faced with these arguments, last Thursday, the Manhattan jury issued a verdict declaring that the designer Thom Browne was not liable for damages or loses by selling products marked with his four stripes or his tricolor ribbon.

Browne’s legal representatives claimed that the designer is not a competitor, as his designs are related to a luxury brand and Adidas is a sports one, as well as that the use of the stripes on sportswear predates the German group.

They also argued that the stripes are a common design. Therefore, Browne will be entitled to continue using this design and the German brand can do nothing to prevent it. In that way one of the countless legal battles between the two brand was concluded.

This is not the first complaint of Adidas, the German brand has had more than 90 lawsuits and more than 200 settlement agreements since 2018 on this same issue, as other brands argue that the three lines of Adidas do not have a distinctive character, therefore, it would not be an exclusive sign of the German company.