Nike takes legal action against StockX over its ‘Vault’ NFTs collection

Nike has filed a lawsuit against sportswear reselling giant StockX, accusing it of using Nike trademarks without authorisation to sell non-fungible tokens from its ‘Vault’ NFTs collection “at heavily inflated prices to unsuspecting consumers”.

In the complaint, Nike says StockX is using its trademarks “without Nike’s authorisation or approval” and is “marketing those NFTs using Nike’s goodwill”, leading to the infringement and dilution of the Nike trademark.

“Nike did not approve of or authorise StockX’s Nike-branded Vault NFTs,” the complaint reads.

“Those unsanctioned products are likely to confuse consumers, create a false association between those products and Nike, and dilute Nike’s famous trademarks.”

Nike went on to question the premise behind the ‘vault’ collection, which StockX says provides customers with NFTs tied to physical products that could be claimed at any time alongside “exclusive access to StockX releases, promotions, and events” tied to ownership.

Both were discredited by Nike in the complaint, saying that it doesn’t “sell StockX’s services or exclusive access to such benefits” whilst noting the apparent lack of a redemption process for NFT holders to actually claim their physical products.

The fashion giant also expressed concerns about reputational damage to its brand and metaverse ambitions, which have been spurred by its highly-publicised acquisition of digital art creative studio RTFKT in December and the establishment of ‘Nike Virtual Studios’ – a venture aimed at improving Nike’s presence in the metaverse.

“StockX’s unauthorised and unapproved branding of Vault NFTs with Nike trademarks is likely to confuse consumers, create a false association between the parties, jeopardise the capacity of Nike’s famous marks to identify its own digital goods in the metaverse and beyond, and harm Nike’s reputation through an association with inferior digital products,” Nike complained.

The notice also pointed out that Nike and RTFKT – the creator of the now popular ‘CLONE X – X TAKASHI MURAKAMI’ collection – will release a number of ‘virtual products’ this month.