Adidas has sued White Fox Boutique over its omnipresent advertisements and sales of clothes with four stripes, alleging breach of its three-stripe trademark.
The German-headquartered sports clothing brand accused White Fox of rejecting its repeated requests to stop selling the clothes in filings in the federal court of Australia.
Adidas said its representatives then bought a dozen of the contravening items and photographed their ubiquitous ads on Sydney’s bus network, presented as proof to the court.
White Fox advertisements dominate buses and billboards all over Sydney, London and Los Angeles. The online retailer launched in 2013 and its hoodies and sweatpants, many with the brand’s distinctive bubble-font logo, are popular among teenagers and young adults across Australia and the US.
White Fox’s social media shows it began selling products with four stripes in January 2026.
Adidas said the clothes were “substantially identical with or otherwise deceptively similar” to its own trademark products, in claims first filed in September and updated on Thursday.
It alleged White Fox was associating itself with Adidas, producing the false perception that Adidas produced, permitted or approved of the clothes, or at least was “sailing close to the wind”.
It accused White Fox of further confusing customers by promoting its socks and pants in pictures with three-striped Adidas shoes, with models wearing both. Adidas claimed White Fox later digitally altered the photos to remove a stripe.
The company said it asked White Fox to cease selling the products on 19 March and an Adidas representative bought a pair of white-striped plum-coloured lounge shorts from White Fox the next day.
Adidas said its representatives kept collecting evidence, providing photographs of advertisements on buses and bus stands from April to June. White Fox allegedly supplied another 12 items with four stripes to Adidas representatives from May to July.
Adidas has asked for White Fox to stop selling the products, declare it broke the law, and pay its profits on the products plus damages, interests and costs.
The €25bn (A$40bn) company has held trademarks over clothes with three stripes since 1952 and in Australia since 1973. It won a 2013 case against Pacific Brands for selling Dunlop and Grosby shoes that bore four parallel stripes.
Adidas has lost some of its trademarks in the UK in a 2025 appeal to a case against designer Thom Browne and has been denied broad trademarks over three stripes in the European Union.
White Fox was founded by Sydney couple Georgia and Daniel Contos, who privately own it along with Daniel’s mother, Melina Maceri.
The retailer’s legal firm, Gilbert and Tobin, said it could not comment on a matter before the court, when asked whether White Fox would defend the lawsuit.
The company’s financial accounts show it generated A$542m in Australia and the US in the year to June 2025, while spending $52m on marketing. The Australian corporate regulator fined it $187,800 in 2025 for filing its accounts late.
In April, White Fox took down a social media ad after Australia’s Ad Standards found it depicted women promoting heavy drinking and encouraging unsafe behaviour to the brand’s “strong youth audience”.
The first case management hearing was scheduled for Friday, to be heard by Justice Ian Jackman, the brother of actor Hugh Jackman.