The IP Runway: Issue No. 15
Intellectual property insights for the global business of fashion.
When a Verdict Does Not End the Fight Over a Signature Stripe
Some houses sign their work with a logo. Adidas signs with three stripes. Thom Browne, the New York luxury house known for its tailoring, signs with four.
In 2023, a jury sided with Thom Browne on every claim. Adidas has not accepted that verdict. The fight is now before the US Supreme Court, and on October 12 Adidas opened a second front against another four-stripe brand in Australia.
The case, fast
Adidas sued Thom Browne in New York in 2021. It claimed that the house’s Four-Bar and Grosgrain stripe designs infringed and diluted the three-stripe mark and amounted to unfair competition, especially as Thom Browne moved into activewear.
After a two-week trial, the jury found for Thom Browne on every claim. The judgment was entered in January 2023, and the Second Circuit upheld it in May 2024.
That should have been the end. Then the emails arrived.
While the appeal was pending, Thom Browne produced four internal emails in a separate case in the UK. They had never been handed over in the New York case, and Adidas went back to court asking to reopen the verdict.
The emails date from 2016 to 2019. In 2016, an account manager told a distributor the company tried to avoid rows of four-bar armbands “so as to not look like Adidas.” In 2018, a senior colleague wrote that it was “inevitable that our 4bar in white be read as adidas stripes,” especially on accessories. In 2019, a marketing executive relayed that FC Barcelona saw four bars as “too much in the spirit of Adidas.”
Four emails, four bars, and a verdict that did not move.
The Second Circuit agreed in April 2026 that Thom Browne’s lawyers had been negligent in failing to produce the emails. It still refused to reopen the case, for two reasons.
First, it held that a merely negligent failure to produce documents is not the kind of misconduct that allows a final judgment to be reopened. Second, it found the emails probably would not have changed the verdict. They did not directly address shopper confusion, and they concerned FC Barcelona formalwear and accessories, not the activewear in the case.
Where the fight goes now
On September 28, Adidas asked the US Supreme Court to take the case. Its question is narrow: must misconduct be worse than negligence, or can a careless failure to produce evidence count? Adidas argues that several other federal appeals courts accept negligence and that the Second Circuit stands apart.
That is Adidas’s account of the law. The Court has not said whether it will hear the case, and most petitions are not granted.
On October 12, Australian media reported that Adidas had sued White Fox Boutique, a Sydney online fashion retailer, in the Federal Court of Australia. Adidas says White Fox’s four parallel stripes are deceptively similar to its three-stripe mark. It also alleges White Fox paired the pieces with genuine Adidas shoes in advertising.
White Fox calls the stripes decorative and says other brands sell similar designs. The hearing is set for early 2027.
Why this matters beyond one stripe
A signature is only as strong as its defense. Adidas says it has used its three stripes in Australia for more than 65 years, and it keeps challenging stripes wherever they appear. A mark’s strength depends partly on how consistently its owner defends it.
Documents travel. Thom Browne’s emails surfaced in a UK case and ended up in a New York appeal. A house in trademark fights in several countries should assume its internal emails can be read in all of them.
A discovery mistake can keep a case alive, even when it does not change the result.
One caution. Nothing here is a finding that Thom Browne copied anything. A jury rejected Adidas’s claims, and the courts upheld that. The emails show that people inside the company worried about resemblance, which is not the same as a legal ruling.
Reading the runway
Adidas lost at trial, lost on appeal, and lost its bid to reopen the case. Now it is asking the highest court in the US to look at that last decision, while it takes the same fight to Australia.
A verdict ends a case, but not always a campaign. For now, the fight over the stripe is open on two continents.
More soon.
The IP Runway
Sources: the US Supreme Court docket (No. 26-445, petition filed September 28, 2026), the Second Circuit opinion in Adidas America v. Thom Browne (No. 24-1510, April 29, 2026), Courthouse News, ABC Australia, and DesignRush, reporting on Adidas v. Thom Browne (S.D.N.Y.) and Adidas v. White Fox Boutique (Federal Court of Australia).
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