A recent European case in which Adidas successfully objected to
a two-stripe device trade mark for footwear is interesting for us
in Africa. For starters, it's a welcome respite from the almost
endless stream of bad news that we get from up north regarding
non-traditional trade marks – shape trade marks seem to
be having a particularly hard time at the moment. But the decision
is also interesting because a few years back the South African
Supreme Court of Appeal ("SCA") decided
that the Adidas three-stripe device trade mark had been infringed
by a company using a four-stripe device on shoes.
The European case in question is Shoe Branding Europe BVBA v
Adidas and OHIM (Case C-396/15P). The matter
involved a trade mark opposition and the central issue was
whether Shoe Branding's European trade mark application to
register a two-stripe device for footwear was confusingly similar
to three-stripe device trade mark registrations belonging to
Adidas. In the case of Shoe
