Adidas Opposes Turner Broadcasting's ELEAGUE Logo Trademark Because Of Lines

from the those-damned-lines dept

eSports, the once fledgling video game competition industry, has undergone several milestones in rapid succession as it grows into a true entertainment player. Once relegated to online streaming broadcasts, mostly run out of a few Asian and Pacific Island countries, eSports is now regularly broadcast on American television, including by ESPN. From there, it was a fairly natural progression for universities to take notice and begin organizing school eSports teams, as well as offering scholarships for eAthletes.

But while these milestones are both important to and positive for the eSports industry, not all milestones will always be so happy. I would argue that it's a milestone of sorts that a real-world athletic apparel company, Adidas, is suing an eSports league over its logo. Turner Broadcasting has invested in a venture called ELEAGUE, which has been broadcasting eSports for the better part of two years. Turner registered several trademarks for ELEAGUE, including the following logo.

Regular Techdirt readers will have already guessed why Adidas has opposed the trademark for the logo. Going back for what feels like time immemorial, Adidas has jealously protected the broad but admittedly iconic three-stripes logo it has cultivated for itself. And while even we skeptics can carve out a space for Adidas to have a valid claim on that sort of mark, it's been Adidas' aggression in going after anyone using anything even remotely similar to three-stripes regardless of shared industries, notable variations in branding, or actual customer confusion.

Which doesn't keep the company lawyers from pretending otherwise in oppositions such as this one against ELEAGUE, of course.

The opposition is filed on two counts—confusion and dilution.

The first alleges that the similarity between the two logos, that they consist of three broken lines, and "the fact that their respective goods and services overlap or are otherwise closely related" means that the ELEAGUE logo could create the impression that events are sponsored or endorsed by Adidas. While Adidas acknowledges that it does not do business in esports—although it is the shirt sponsor of Counter-Strike team North—esports is "within the natural zone of expansion of adidas’s business and goods and services".

On the second count, Adidas contends that the similarity between the brands will dilute the strength of the Adidas logo as a hallmark of authentic Adidas goods. That, Adidas say, would damage their brand.

Again, I suppose it's a milestone of sorts that a big player like Adidas files a trademark opposition under the theory that real-world athletic apparel and eSports broadcasts are in related industries. Still, the claim is an obvious stretch. The actual ELEAGUE logo calls to mind the letter "E", not Adidas' stripes, and the associated branding throughout the rest of the logo act as a clear source identifier. Pained concerns about customer confusion on the part of Adidas would seem to be laughable on their face, nevermind the question as to why it took so long for Adidas to undertake this if there is so much customer confusion and dilution.

Turner Sports first filed the trademark application in June 2016, but it took Adidas until Oct. 10 of this year to file the opposition.

It sure seems like the kind of harm Adidas is claiming would have required hastier action than a year and half's worth of waiting. Hopefully those reviewing the opposition will take that into account and grant ELEAGUE its mark.

Filed Under: eleague, esports, lines, sports, trademark
Companies: adidas, turner broadcasting

Adidas Can't Trademark 'Adizero' Because A Small Chicago Church Sold Two 'Add A Zero' Hats To Someone In Wisconsin

from the carry-the-one dept

Just when you think you've seen it all in trademark disputes, a story comes along and slaps you across the face with its silliness. Quite often, I find myself writing in support of small groups staving off trademark bullying by big corporate entities. This has far less to do with any hostility to big business than it does with the fact that trademark bullying is a tactic more commonly employed by big business than small business or individuals. But that isn't always the case and I am certainly not above galloping to the rescue of a huge corporation with so much cash in its coffers that it would make Scrooge McDuck would blush.

For more than half a decade, sports apparel giant Adidas has been trying to trademark "Adizero" as a brand in the United States. It has been unable to do so solely because a small church based in Chicago has a trademark on the phrase "Add a zero" for clothing, and it appears that enough people think this is enough of a problem to hold up the trademark application.

Since 2009, the German sportswear giant has been attempting to federally register its “Adizero” mark but has been unable to due to existing trademarks held by the Chicago-based church, including one that extends to clothing, "namely, shirts, and caps." Initially, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) refused adidas’ trademark application because of its similarity to the church’s own "Add a Zero" trademarks - the first of which was registered in 2006. According to the USPTO, consumers were likely to be confused due to the similarity of the two parties' trademarks.

On its face, this concern seems to be quite silly. For starters, one of these marks is a phrase in plain English, while the other is a fanciful portmanteau of sorts that seems to be made up of whole cloth. I'm not even sure the pronunciation for both marks is the same if spoken aloud, but certainly anyone seeing image branding of both side by side would not be rendered dumbstruck in confusion. When one adds to this that one of these entities is a famous brand likely to have its three-striped logo plastered all over an Adizero sportswear, while the other is a confessing Christian organization, this all begins to sound silly.

For its part, Adidas filed a motion with the USPTO in an appeal to have the church's marks cancelled entirely, arguing both that the church's marks don't really act as any kind of source indentifier and that the church isn't actually using the marks consistently in commerce. The USPTO's Trademark Trial and Appeal Board agreed and cancelled the marks, noting that the church's interstate commerce had amounted entirely to it selling two hats to somebody in Wisconsin. It was on the use in commerce question alone, it's worth noting, that the TTAB made this decision.

The church actually appealed this ruling, saying that the meager duo of hat-sales did represent use in commerce... and the Federal Circuit agreed.

Judge Kara Farnandez Stoll stated on Monday that the Lanham Act's definition of "use in commerce" includes any activity that Congress could regulate under the Commerce Clause. Sale of clothing to an out-of-state buyer "falls comfortably within" that definition, Stoll wrote in the decision joined by Judges Jimmie Reyna and Todd Hughes.

The Federal Circuit refused to require a specific number of transactions to meet the "use in commerce" standard. To the extent that the TTAB's own decisions may conflict with that rule, they are expressly overturned, the court held. The Federal Circuit sent the case back to the TTAB for consideration of other arguments raised by adidas.

Here's hoping that the TTAB finds in favor of Adidas on the other arguments. Meanwhile, apparently two sales qualifies for use in commerce for trademark purposes. Quite a standard we're setting.

Filed Under: add a zero, adizero, trademark, use in commerce
Companies: adidas

DailyDirt: Reusing Plastic Instead Of Throwing It All Away...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Disposable packaging adds up to a lot of trash. Sure, some of it gets recycled, but there's a significant amount that doesn't -- and ends up polluting the environment in mind-boggling ways. In the not-so-distant future, we might have more plastic in the ocean by weight than fish. But it doesn't have to be that way.

• Making comfortable running shoes from plastic recycled from old fishing nets retrieved from the coast of Africa isn't the easiest way to recycle, but it might be one of the more fashionable ways. Adidas is only making 50 pairs of shoes made with this kind of recycled plastic, so it's nowhere near a sustainable manufacturing process. However, using more recycled plastics in fashionable items could catch on -- if it can be done economically. [url]
• Do you have any idea what all those plastic recycling numbers mean? A bunch of common plastics that make up everyday containers can also be useful prototyping materials, so check out this brief guide to prototyping materials for which plastics might be suitable for DIY projects. [url]
• Plastic garbage floating on water might be gathered up more easily with a "tractor beam" of small artificial surface waves. It would probably be a bit difficult to overcome the natural waves in the oceans to clean up garbage, but this is analogous to how trash in ocean gyres came about in the first place. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: cleanup, garbage, ocean gyre, plastics, pollution, recycling, tractor beam, waste
Companies: adidas

Olympics Can't Hire Enough Actual Security, But Fully Staffed With 'Brand Police'

from the that'll-work dept

We've talked about how the Olympics are so focused on hiding any non-sponsor brand that they had officials in Beijing during the last Olympics tape over bathroom fixtures from non-sponsoring companies. And it was clear that this same sort of activity was set to continue this time around in London, including a specific law against "ambush marketing."

You may have heard the reports in London about the terrible security for the London Olympics that has left things in "absolute chaos," due to a failure to hire enough security personnel. In fact, there's talk of soldiers having to be called in to help. Given all that, it's interesting to find out that the Olympics do have a fully-staffed "brand police" force, which is heading around the city to carefully block any non-sponsor brands, and try to track down and kill off any kind of unpaid-for marketing.

Almost 300 enforcement officers will be seen across the country checking firms to ensure they are not staging "ambush marketing" or illegally associating themselves with the Games at the expense of official sponsors such as Adidas, McDonald's, Coca-Cola and BP....

Wearing purple caps and tops, the experts in trading and advertising working for the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) are heading the biggest brand protection operation staged in the UK. Under legislation specially introduced for the London Games, they have the right to enter shops and offices and bring court action with fines of up to £20,000.

So, if a terrorist attack happens to hit London over the next few weeks, at least we'll know that it wasn't sponsored by some non-paying brand.

Filed Under: london, olympics, sponsorship, uk
Companies: adidas, bp, coca-cola, mcdonald's

Becoming A Platform: How RunKeeper Continues To Keep Competitors At Bay

from the business-model-jujitsu dept

Last year, we wrote about the very interesting case of RunKeeper, a small startup, which initially focused on software for iPhones for people to track their running information, and how it successfully outran Nike and other big sporting goods companies. This was in response to the claim we hear all the time that a small company "can't compete" with some big company that can just "copy the idea and throw lots of money at it." The reality is a lot more complex. Can big companies sometimes do that? Absolutely. Does it happen that often? No. The reasons aren't too difficult to understand. If the innovation is truly disruptive, the big companies are often at a steep disadvantage: (1) They don't fully understand the innovation or really why consumers/users want it. Instead, they understand the superficial reasons and that's all they copy. (2) They are held back by legacy issues, and their legacy business model, which might be undercut by the true innovation. That was definitely the case with RunKeeper, which could be brand-agnostic in its solution, whereas players like Nike and Adidas were somewhat held back.

Since then, I've been following the situation with RunKeeper pretty closely (and got to meet CEO Jason Jacobs a few months ago, where we got to totally geek out on innovation and business models). Anyway, the company has now taken things to the next level, distancing itself even further from the competition. Over the past few years, the company has added ways for other data and systems to hook into RunKeeper, which has become a wider "fitness" app rather than just a running app. One of the things that the company developed during this time was a "Health Graph" that pulled a lot of this info together in a very useful manner:

Imagine a system that can identify correlations between a user’s eating habits, workout schedule, social interactions and more, to deliver an ecosystem of health and fitness apps, websites, and sensor devices that really work, based on a user’s own historical health and fitness data. The Health Graph has the potential to completely alter the health and fitness landscape.

But where things get really interesting is that RunKeeper has now opened up the Health Graph API so that others can not just tap into Health Graph but build on it as well, basically letting all sorts of other services and devices build on this pretty cool and complete platform -- something which the other players in the space simply don't have:

What does this mean for device manufacturers and developers? They now have the opportunity to build an endless array of apps, that draw on the powerful data within the Health Graph. Health Graph developers also benefit from the social features on RunKeeper.com to gain exposure and drive sales. Social features, like our FitnessFeed and Facebook & Twitter sharing integrations, are a fundamental part of the RunKeeper.com experience; we’re opening up these forums to apps and devices that build on the Health Graph, to provide our 6MM+ community members with easy access to all the tools that integrate with RunKeeper.

I find this especially interesting considering our recent discussion on platform reliance, and how the big opportunities are in becoming your own platform. Think about this for a second: many people dismissed RunKeeper, early on, as a small app for tracking running info, and lots of people assumed naturally that once the "big players" got into the ring, RunKeeper would inevitably be crushed. But RunKeeper has continued to innovate and continued to focus on that core goal of making the overall "fitness" community better informed and better able to do things with their data, so that they're able to stay ahead of the big guys, even though we're talking about some of the biggest companies around, with tons of cash and the most recognized brands in the world.

Filed Under: business models, competition, platforms, small companies
Companies: adidas, nike, runkeeper

Senator Wyden Calls Out Content Companies For Wanting To Censor The Internet

from the kudos dept

We've already covered the list of companies who support censoring the internet, but there were a couple of other interesting ones on the list that deserved a separate discussion. Greg Sandoval over at News.com did a nice job of reading between the lines to notice that Nike & Adidas were prominently featured in the letter and suggesting that this was targeted at Senator Ron Wyden, who was the only Senator who stood up and said that COICA was a bad idea, and blocked it from being rushed through last year. Wyden, of course, is from Oregon, and Nike is based in Portland and has tremendous influence in Oregon. Adidas also has a large operation in Oregon.

Sandoval also got a comment from Wyden's office, suggesting the Senator is still standing up for what's right, rather than bowing to political pressure:

"Senator Wyden has long worked with U.S. industry on combating the trafficking of counterfeit goods like fake shoes and apparel. But going after trade in real merchandise can be done in a variety of effective ways, like inspecting shipping containers at American ports of entry to identify and seize fake merchandise.

"Unfortunately, the content industry has piggybacked on the legitimate efforts of apparel designers to combat counterfeit goods and now threaten the integrity of the Internet as a means to combat intellectual property infringement. The Internet is too important to our economy and to advancing American values to be inappropriately regulated and censored under the guise of protecting IP, which is why Congress and the Administration should be as cautious as it is surgical when it aims its sights on the Internet."

Nicely said. Hopefully he sticks to it and doesn't cave in to the pressure.

Filed Under: censorship, coica, ron wyden
Companies: adidas, nike

Runkeeper's Ability To Outrun Nike & Adidas Shows How Big Companies Don't Always Copy & Win

from the run,-baby,-run dept

Over and over again we hear this refrain from people that, without extra protection from things like patents, startups would get crushed when big companies decide to just copy them. And yet, over and over again, when we look at the situations in real life, you see that it's a lot more difficult than people think. We discussed it recently when looking at how Netflix survived competition from Blockbuster, Amazon and Wal-Mart, but some people felt even that wasn't a good example, because by the time those three players got into the market, Netflix really did have a huge head start (which is something of an exaggeration anyway).

However, here's yet another fascinating example, sent over by my friend Tom, concerning the iPhone/Android app RunKeeper, and how it's successfully fended off competition from a bunch of different giant sporting gear companies, including Nike. Now, it's worth pointing out that RunKeeper (the little startup) initially got its idea for an iPhone app that tracks your exercise routine via a sensor, and then integrates that data into a web service, from Nike's famous Nike+ attachment for the iPod. Rather than using a shoe sensor, the guy who started RunKeeper decided to build it ontop of the iPhone's GPS, and make it so that it wasn't shoe specific, as Nike's was (though, to be fair, I know plenty of people who used Nike+ devices on non-Nike shoes).

RunKeeper definitely picked up a following among iPhone users. However, a year after it came out, Nike not only came out with their own version of Nike+ for the iPhone and iPod Touch... but it had done a deal with Apple to come pre-installed on every one of those Apple devices. A bunch of people predicted that Nike was going to "kill" RunKeeper this way, and all the folks who always insist that big companies will just come in and kill any innovative startup by copying them, would be proven wrong:

But quite the contrary, Nike's arrival did nothing but help RunKeeper. Nike poured their huge marketing budget into educating people on why to run with their phone, and as a result, RunKeeper's numbers more than doubled. My blog post from this time period is here.

And flourish RunKeeper did. We gained more than 2 million iPhone users, we were named by TIME Magazine as a top 10 iPhone app of 2009, and this big, passionate, global community of runners rallied around the RunKeeper system on the social web, and at www.runkeeper.com. We also ported our solution to Android (where we are currently a featured app), enabled manual map creation on the web, and integrated with a wi-fi scale, so users could send their weight data to www.runkeeper.com as well.

Along the way, other footwear companies like New Balance tried to get in the game with the 'NB TotalFit' app, but didn't make a dent (white labeled from our 'big scary' competitor).  Then, Nike's arm got twisted even further when Adidas came out with their MiCoach system in August 2010, which is a GPS-based system.  Here was another running shoe company jumping into the mix with a reasonable attempt, this one without tethering users to a specific pair of shoes.  And Adidas came in with full guns blazing, running TV ads, sponsoring major races/events that featured MiCoach prominently, and investing heavily in trying to unseat RunKeeper as the go-to smartphone fitness tracking platform.  So, one month in, what are the results so far?  As of today, Adidas is ranked #18 in iPhone health/fitness and RunKeeper is ranked #14.  Not bad for this little startup from Boston with zero marketing budget .  In fact, MiCoach was #61 until last week, when Walt Mossberg's column gave them a big (and arguably misinformed) plug in the WSJ.

The point of the blog post was to discuss the fact that Nike was again copying RunKeeper, and going from a shoe-based sensor to a GPS application, but RunKeeper notes that it's not that worried. Why? Because it recognizes some key and important differences:

All of you big guys jumping in with major marketing budgets, you are doing this as a brand play. We are not. You are doing this to try to ultimately sell more people your footwear/apparel. We are not. You are big and slow moving. We are not.

Fascinating stuff. In Oded Shenkar's recent book, Copycats, there are many examples of this kind of thing. It talks about the importance of copying, but also how many companies really aren't able to copy effectively. In many cases, it's because of very different cost structures and incentives. In this case, Nike is focused on selling more apparel and the Nike offering has to work towards that end, while RunKeeper can focus on other features. Could Nike successfully overtake RunKeeper? Absolutely. But a lot of it depends on execution, and there's certainly no guarantee. As for the others who entered the market, in at least some cases, it looks like they engaged in cargo cult copying, where they copied the superficial aspects of what they saw, but didn't truly understand the market.

And, really, this is what competition is good for. Having more players in the market try different things is good for everyone. Not only does it force everyone to keep adjusting, it also pushes them all to keep experimenting with ways to better serve customers and to leapfrog over one another. Each one of these solutions may appear similar on the surface, but there are differences, as each company tries to tweak an idea to see what works. RunKeeper's initial tweak on the Nike+ appears to have worked, but so far none of the "tweaks" on RunKeeper's success have worked all that well. But, as those other (much larger) firms continue to tweak and tweak again, it's also pushing RunKeeper to keep improving its app. That's good for everyone.

What we're seeing is, once again, plain old imitation by itself doesn't appear to work very well, but imitation, plus some element of innovation to make it better does wonders. And yet, so many people don't seem to recognize this and simply assume that the "big guys" will automatically copy and kill any new startup.

Filed Under: big, competition, copying, small
Companies: adidas, nike, runkeeper

Can You Own Stripes?

from the striped-moron-in-a-hurry dept

We've discussed over and over again how companies misuse trademark law, believing that it gives them total ownership over the mark, rather than the fact that it's really designed to prevent consumer confusion. Joe Mullin has the details on the fact that shoemaker Adidas is suing a bunch of different companies for using stripes on shoes or other clothing. Adidas, famously, uses three parallel stripes on the side of its shoes as part of its brand -- and has a trademark on that design. That seems fair enough. But now it's won a $305 million ruling against a shoe retailer for daring to sell shoes that had two or four stripes. The company has also sued many other brands for various combinations of stripes and clothing. This is what happens when people talk about trademark as being "intellectual property." It gets them thinking that it creates total ownership over something as basic as stripes.

Filed Under: stripes, trademark
Companies: adidas