The Japan Patent Office’s Opposition Board has denied The Big a’s attempt to invalidate Japanese company Marubeni Footwear’s trademark registration for its diagonal two-stripe logo. As usual in these cases, Adidas presented evidence of its long history of using the Three Stripes mark, and argued that Marubeni’s two diagonal stripes would create confusion with customers. It also noted that Marubeni’s logo would look like three stripes if the background was a different color. The Opposition Board ruled that while the Three Stripes was certainly well known, an average customer could distinguish between the two stripes and ... Log in to view full article.