Veil Jourde, advisor to Isabel Marant in its dispute with Adidas
On June 26th 2024, Veil Jourde and Spinosi have obtained the dismissal, by the commercial chamber of the Court of Cassation, of Adidas’ appeal in its dispute with the French design house Isabel Marant.
The dispute was initiated by the emblematic German equipment manufacturer following the marketing by Isabel Marant, in its 2017 – 2018 collections, of ready-to-wear pieces decorated with two parallel side bands.
It is within the framework of its strategy of extending the protection of its brand to the iconic “three stripes”, that Adidas had thus introduced appeals on the grounds of counterfeiting, damage to its notoriety and unfair competition.
Adidas’ arguments nevertheless failed to convince: if they were only partially dismissed in the fall of 2020 by the Paris judicial court which upheld the attack on notoriety, this conviction was overturned by the Court appeal in November 2022 which dismissed Adidas’s entire claims.
The lower court judges then considered that the similarities between the signs in question – ornamental parallel side bands – were weak, and the notoriety of Isabel Marant sufficiently high for the consumer not to suffer confusion between products marketed on clearly distinct markets: sportswear and luxury ready-to-wear.
The same path was followed by the Court of Cassation on June 26, 2024, rejecting Adidas’ appeal on the grounds that the grounds invoked “are clearly not likely to lead to cassation”, and ordering Adidas to compensate Isabel Marant on the basis of article 700 of the civil procedure code.
The Veil Jourde firm advised Isabel Marant, with Corinne Vallery-Masson, partner, and Carla Andersson, associate, on the litigation aspects. Dorothée Barthélemy-Delahaye, partner of the eponymous firm, advised Isabel Marant on intellectual property aspects.
