Adidas Sues Australian Label White Fox in Federal Court, Saying Four Stripes Trade on Its Three-Stripe Mark

SYDNEY — Adidas sued the Australian label White Fox in the Federal Court, arguing that clothes sold with four parallel stripes are deceptively similar to the three-stripe mark the German company has held in Australia since 1957.

Adidas told the court it had asked White Fox to stop selling and advertising the clothes since March and that the Sydney company refused. Lawyers for Adidas said White Fox, in advertising and selling the four-stripe garments, had the "intention to trade off our reputation." The statement of claim says the three-stripe design has a "substantial and valuable reputation" in Australia. It says White Fox's designs are "substantially identical with or otherwise deceptively similar" to Adidas, and that the ads are "drawing an association in the minds of consumers" of the two brands, or at least "sailing close to the wind."

The claim also says White Fox advertisements for the four-stripe clothes, and for White Fox socks, showed people wearing genuine Adidas items, which could lead shoppers to think Adidas had approved the design. Adidas filed side-by-side comparisons of sweatpants and lounge shorts, plus photographs of bus and bus-stop billboards. In one example, a June 2025 listing showed White Fox socks modeled with pink Adidas shoes. The documents allege that days after the case was lodged last month, one stripe was digitally removed from the shoes in the image, and that a week later all three stripes were gone.

White Fox has not yet filed a formal defense. Its lawyers told Justice Ian Jackman that the company denies any trademark breach and will argue that other Australian brands, including Cotton On, Sportscraft and Glassons, sell clothes with "similar decorative stripes." A trial of three to four days is expected early next year. Adidas is seeking the profit on the products, plus interest and costs.

Adidas reported €24.8 billion in revenue in 2025, about $28 billion. In 2013 it won an Australian case against Pacific Brands over four-stripe shoes. White Fox was started in 2013 by Georgia and Daniel Contos and is owned by the couple and Daniel's mother, Melina Maceri. The Australian Financial Review reported revenue of A$542 million in the year to June 2025, up from A$121 million in 2022. The label sells online in Australia, Britain and the United States, and has used billboards, bus ads and university-age influencers.

A three-stripe mark and a four-stripe garment are not the same drawing. Adidas's case is that the difference is the point of the imitation: close enough to borrow the reputation, different enough to argue it is decoration. White Fox's case, as stated in court on Friday, is that stripes of that kind are already on clothes from larger Australian chains, and that a refusal since March is not an admission. Neither argument has been tried. The altered shoe image, if the court accepts the sequence Adidas alleges, is a fact about an advertisement, not a finding about a trademark. The hearing that will decide it is set for early next year.