According to the complaint that they filed in a federal court in Oregon on Monday, Nike and Converse claim that Waskowiak and his company KickRich LLC are liable for damages for making custom shoes that “combine purportedly genuine Nike shoe soles with uppers fabricated entirely by the defendants,” and that include “reproductions of Nike’s famous Swoosh design and other protected trade dress,” and then selling them for “hundreds or up to several thousand dollars each.”
Nike and Converse allege that the defendants acquire genuine Nike and Converse footwear, such the Air Jordan 1 and Air Force 1, as well as Converse’s Chuck Taylor All Star, and then, “without authorization, alter them in such a manner that constitute new, unauthorized products” over which Nike and Converse “have no control” even though their trademarks “remain intact” on the “custom” shoes. While these allegedly “customized” shoes “may use pieces of genuine Nike and Converse shoes,” the plaintiff argues that the genuine parts are “so altered and combined with non-genuine parts or other brands’ logos that they can no longer be meaningfully considered Nike or Converse shoes.”
