The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear Nike Inc.’s appeal in a long-running sneaker design dispute with Adidas AG on Monday.
For years now, the two athletic brand heavyweights have been arguing over various patents that Nike has filed regarding the design of knit uppers in its sneakers.
The high court turned away the Portland, Ore.-based company’s appeal to overturn a U.S. Patent Office tribunal’s decision to cancel part of a shoe patent in a since settled dispute with Adidas.
According to court documents, Nike was contesting the tribunal’s decision to invalidate the company’s proposed substitute patent elements based on arguments that Adidas had not raised at the time.
A patent awarded in March 2008 outlined that Nike owned, among other things, the “upper” textile component of athletic sneakers made from “different stitch configurations with varying textures,” in which a single textile is formed using various knitting processes.
Once awarded, Adidas petitioned for a review of the patent, arguing that the patent’s claims were unpatentable or obvious in light of several prior-art references — including a number of existing patents.
Nike subsequently moved to amend the patent by canceling all the previously issued claims and proposing new substitute claims. Only one of those proposed claims, related to shoelace apertures in its knit upper sneaker designs, were opposed by Adidas, arguing that the substitute claims were still unpatentable as obvious in light of prior art.
The back and forth eventually led to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sending the case back to the board twice and rejected a third appeal by Nike last year. And, in March, Nike officially submitted its petition to the Supreme Court.
FN has reached out to Nike and Adidas and the two companies’ respective lawyers listed on the docket for comment. Where the case goes from here is unclear.
This is the latest court battle between the two footwear powerhouses. Last August, Nike and Adidas settled a series of U.S. patent disputes over sneaker technology. This dispute between the two athletic companies started in Dec. 2021 when Nike Inc. filed a suit in the United States District Court District of Oregon claiming that Adidas AG was infringing on several of its footwear patents, namely its Flyknit knitted shoe upper technology. The suit specifically cited Adidas’s Primeknit shoes as an example of a product that allegedly infringed on Nike’s patents.
Adidas filed its own lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas last June. In this countersuit, Adidas claimed that Nike “knowingly and intentionally” infringed on nine patents related to Adidas’ proprietary athletic technology. The lawsuit calls out Nike’s Run Club app, the Nike Training Club app and the Nike SNKRS app as allegedly containing infringing elements. The complaint also takes issue with Nike’s software connects that connects to its shoes via a remote device, which is featured in the Nike Adapt, HyperAdapt and the 2016 Nike Mag.
Both of these disputes last year were eventually settled.
