Nike persuaded a US Patent and Trademark Office tribunal to reinstate the shoemaker’s federal trademark application for ‘SNKRS,’ the name of their popular smartphone app for sneaker sales.
The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board overruled a trademark examiner’s finding that ‘SNKRS’ was a generic term for trainers that could not be trademarked.
Nike’s trademarks will now be published in the Trademark Gazette of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, where third parties will have 30 days to oppose them before they are registered.
Since 2015, more than 1 billion people have visited Nike’s SNKRS platform, which sells innovative and limited-edition Nike shoes and gear. It submitted a federal trademark registration application in 2020 for services such an ‘online marketplace featuring footwear and clothing.’
Nike’s applications to register the trademarks in 2021 were denied by the USPTO. ‘SNKRS’ was deemed generic in those categories by a federal trademark examiner because it was the phonetic equivalent of the term ‘sneakers.’
The board found that ‘SNKRS’ was descriptive rather than generic and may be protected by a trademark if it had developed a distinctive identity as a Nike brand.
According to the board, SNKRS is a well-known brand among sneaker customers. Since 2015, Nike has allegedly used the mark in ‘substantially exclusive’ ways, and since 2019, more than 10 million SNKRS orders have been placed in North America.
It further claimed that Nike had heavily promoted SNKRS and that SNKRS had received a substantial amount of uninvited media attention.
