Adidas monopolizes strips

The German concern once again defended its rights to a three-way logo

Rospatent approved Adidas International Marketing BV’s application to annul the Turkish shoe company’s trademark rights, elements of which duplicate the well-known logo in the form of three stripes. The company has repeatedly sued manufacturers of clothes and shoes, whose logos can be associated with buyers with Adidas, and each time won the proceedings.

The Chamber of Patent Disputes of Rospatent last Friday invalidated the provision of legal protection for the trademark of the Turkish company Intermar Simanto Nahmias, which sold Jump brand shoes in Russia. The logo that the company owned since 2006 of the year is a composition of a circle and three stripes located next to each other, which, according to Adidas, create a false impression on the consumer regarding the manufacturer of the goods.

As noted in the decision of the Patent Office, a trademark is recognized as false if at least one of its elements misleads the buyer about its origin. “The presence in the contested trademark of a geometric figure in the form of a circle as a whole does not affect the general conclusion about the similarity,” the document says. In its statement, the German company cites the history of the creation of the “3 stripes” logo, as well as a number of court cases in which the Turkish manufacturer was prohibited from using the trademark.

The head of Intermar Simanto Nahmias, Simanto Nahimas, together with Tatiana Injebay, owns Jump Russia, which in 2005 began selling Turkish Jump shoes on the Russian market. In 2008, the company produced sneakers under the Jump & Shnurov brand together with the ex-leader of the Leningrad group, Sergei Shnurov. According to the data in the SPARK system, Tatiana Injebay is also a founder of the Crossway company, which today produces and sells children's shoes under the Kakadu brand. The Crossway chief was not available for comment on Monday, and a company spokesman could not give details of the Jump footwear release, noting that "this story has been around for a long time."

Adidas regularly sues companies that use three stripes in their products. Among them are the Russian footwear manufacturers "CenterObuv" and "Alba-Corporation" (trademark ALBA). As reported in the "Alba-Corporation", now the company is starting to pay a fine of 250 thousand rubles to the Adidas structures for using three stripes in the production of one of the shoe models.

“We had three stripes, but they were the direct elements of the shoe that made up the model itself. According to Adidas, they resembled their logo. Nevertheless, during the trial we managed to reduce the amount of the fine by 10 times, so we actually won the case, ”said Artem Yeganyan, head of the legal department of the company. He noted that this was an isolated case, and the batch of shoes with three stripes was practically not sold. Representatives of Adidas were unable to promptly provide a comment, Izvestia newspaper reports.