EU high court rules against Adidas in trademark case

The logo of the sports goods manufacturer 'Adidas' is pictured in Berlin, Germany, Monday, May 6, 2019.

A European Union high court has ruled against German sports apparel giant Adidas' claim that its famous three stripes, applied in any direction, deserve trademark protection. The EU's General Court ruled on Wednesday that the company could not prove that the stripes had a distinctive enough character throughout the 28-nation bloc.

The three parallel stripes seen adorning everything from running shoes to sports bags and the sleeves of t-shirts are "an ordinary figurative mark", the General Court of the European Union ruled. The court, the EU's second-highest tribunal, upheld a 2016 ruling by the bloc's intellectual property regulator cancelling the registration of the three-stripe design as a trademark following a challenge by a Belgian shoe company.Three years ago, the EU's Intellectual Property Office had struck down the registration of the mark on the grounds it was not distinctive enough throughout the bloc. The court backed the assessment.

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