The EU General Court has upheld a decision that Adidas' three-stripe trademark is invalid. In a judgment on June 19, the court sided with the European Intellectual Property Office's Second Board of Appeal, ruling that the trademark is "extremely simple" and "lacks distinctive character". The trademark in dispute is for a figurative mark which consists of "three parallel equidistant stripes of identical width, applied on the product in any direction". Adidas registered the mark in 2014 for goods including footwear, clothing and headgear. In its judgment today, the General Court said Adidas had failed to show that the mark had acquired "distinctive character" throughout the European Union. Adidas had argued that the registered trademark was not a figurative mark, but a pattern mark which does not have fixed proportions. But, the General Court disagreed. It said it is not apparent from either the graphic representation of the mark or the description of the mark that it is composed of a series of regularly repetitive elements.

Source: worldipreview.com