The Three Stripes…

In the course of trying to read up articles about adidas, I stumbled upon this gem from sometime back by BusinessWeek which details how adidas has been aggressive about maintaining the three stripes trademark. ( Note that the article is dated 2006 )

It has been permanent jurisdiction in German courts since the 1970s that two, three and four stripe designs infringe adidas’ three stripe trademark. The distinctive mark enjoys a worldwide brand awareness of more than 90 percent. According to the German Federal Court of Justice, the public recalls and recognizes such well-known and distinctive brands rather than un-established marks. It is therefore likely that consumers associate and confuse signs with two, three or four parallel stripes with the adidas trademark.

The objection that the questionable stripe motifs are not used as trademarks, but merely for embellishment or decoration, is negligible. This is because the consumer is accustomed to view parallel stripes on apparel and shoes as evidence of origin and not as a simple design motif.

While this gives adidas a great vantage point, it has had a mild repercussion on the company’s apparel design as evidenced by this:

For more than forty years, the three stripes have appeared on athletes’ dress, while other logos were limited in size to 20 centimeters. This was because the three stripes were considered a design motif and not a logo, like the Nike swoosh or the Puma cougar.

Adidas’ competitors demanded that IOC president Jacques Rogge deprive the three stripes mark of its design status. The IOC deduced from the worldwide trademark registration of the three stripes that they should not be treated as a mere design motif anymore.

Hence, adidas now too is bound by the IOC’s Marketing Code of Conduct, which limits logos to a maximum size of 20 centimeters on an athlete’s shirt.

Fascinating read and answered a lot of the questions I had about why an apparent design concept ( parallel stripes ) was not more widely used or attempted to be used by other brands.

Vive la three stripes.