RepArchive Blog

Nike and subsidiary brand Converse have filed a lawsuit against almost 600 websites for selling counterfeit sneakers, many of which you might have heard of before. This comes after a legal saga with designer Warren Lotas.

Nike Inc. and Converse Inc. supposedly filed a 130-page suit at the New York District Court. They call out a total of 589 sites and other online platforms including social media accounts for the "unauthorized and unlawful use of their trademarks."

Court documents show that the Nike accuses the websites in question of selling counterfeit Nike or Converse products to consumers in the United States, within the past twelve months or currently. Some sites were also mentioned for advertising and offering to sell. The brands argue that the products being sold on the infringing websites are likely causing and have caused consumers to mistakenly believe that they are authentic Nike and/or Converse products. The sites are said to be located in and operating from the People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and other foreign jurisdictions.

Nike wants the accused parties to be prevented from selling counterfeit products or any other items that are "confusingly similar" to those manufactured by Nike and Converse. It's also seeking statutory damages of $100,000 per infringing the domain, of which a total of 133 are listed—that's $133,000,000 in total compensation.

After some investigation i found out that the people from the law-frim working from Nike, purchased 46 pairs of shoes, from different sellers. They purchased many of the shoes from popular sellers.
In the documents there have been mentioned so called "networks" in my believe these are groups of sellers that are connected.

As far I know in china, many of the sellers work from their apartments, so the termination of a seller wont affect so much, as these sellers, have drop shipping business in china, they buy in bulk from the factories that supply the shoes and sell them on seller platforms like TaoBao, Weidian. Also, there is the manufacturer who can provide these shoes on the market. My troughs are that the majority of the sellers, do buy from one or more factories that produce 1:1 shoes.

The future of replicas

What would be the future for the RepCulture, there is proverb, if you cut 1 dragon head, 3 will pop out in his place, well this won't affected the sneaker market, there will be new sellers that will emerge, also there many sellers that the replica community haven't seen from online marketplaces like Aliexpress, there are many good sellers on online platforms like aliexpress, dhgate or vova, in my opinion the quality is very good, since there have been good reviews about the states of replicas from such markets. And I recommend to everyone to look up on such platforms.

Links:

Sellers list: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29099727/1/1/nike-inc-v-wwwperfectkicksme/

Lawsuit link: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29099727/nike-inc-v-wwwperfectkicksme/

Sources:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29099727/nike-inc-v-wwwperfectkicksme/

https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.551983/gov.uscourts.nysd.551983.1.0.pdf

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29099727/1/1/nike-inc-v-wwwperfectkicksme/

https://solecollector.com/news/2021/01/nike-sues-websites-selling-counterfeit-sneakers

Disclaimer:

No legal advice