Two stripes and you're out

Trade mark lawyers will be interested in a recent ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the case of Adidas v Marca Moda, C&A Nederland, H&M & others.

The ruling arises from a reference to the ECJ from the Dutch Supreme Court, in a case to do with Adidas' well known three stripes, which it uses on almost all of its sports gear. Adidas has various trade mark registrations for the three stripes.

The ruling is heavily technical, and readers can find a detailed report by Jeremy Philips on Class 46. Here's a quick summary of the key facts and bits of the ruling...

A number of retailers in the Netherlands, including H&M and C&A, had started retailing clothes that featured similar stripes (e.g. H&M sold sports gear with two stripes). Adidas sued these retailers for trade mark infringement. The retailers sought to rely on a number of provisions of the Trade Mark Directive to argue that Adidas' trade marks were either invalid or did not prevent the usage on clothes by others of types of stripes except for three stripes (i.e. two stripes good, three stripes bad!) The ECJ ruled that, because the Adidas three stripes were so distinctive, Adidas could rely on its trade marks to bring infringement actions against others who featured stripes on their clothes.

The above summary deliberately over-simplifies things, so once you've taken in the key facts, head to Class 46's report for the fine detail.