The Nike-owned Converse brand yesterday "called foul” on 31 retailers and manufacturers including Walmart, Kmart, Skechers and H&M by filing 22 trademark infringement suits in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn. As a Huffington Post hed puts it, Converse is suing “Basically Everyone In The World Over Knockoff Chucks.”
“For generations, the Chuck Taylor, universally known as the ‘Chuck,’ has captured the hearts and minds of millions of consumers, selling over a billion pairs globally during the past century,” Converse CEO Jim Calhoun said in a statement forwarded to the HP’s Alexander C. Kaufman. “We welcome fair competition, but we do not believe companies have the right to copy the Chuck’s trademarked look.”
Although Converse “is suing for monetary damages, its main priority is getting impostors off the shelves,” reports the New York Times’ Rachel Abrams, who broke the story.
“The goal really is to stop this action,” Calhoun told Abrams. “I think we’re quite fortunate here to be in the possession of what we would consider to be an American icon.”
This may be one of those rare occasions where “icon” is not overplayed.
“First came the athletes, then the greasers. Then came the nonconformists, the teenagers and finally the baby boomers,” Abrams writes in her lede. “The shoe manufacturer Converse has sold its brand of cool and whiff of rebellion to generations of Americans.”
Tell me ’bout it.
Before they were “Chucks,” they were “Cons” — at least in our neck of the Bronx woods. And we used to walk more than six miles round trip to an Army Navy store on Fordham Road — careful to avoid the fabled greasers (who we actually never saw) — to get them for $14 instead of the standard $16 or so. They came in two colors, white or black, and two styles, high-top or low-top.
“For generations, the Chuck Taylor, universally known as the ‘Chuck,’ has captured the hearts and minds of millions of consumers, selling over a billion pairs globally during the past century,” Converse CEO Jim Calhoun said in a statement forwarded to the HP’s Alexander C. Kaufman. “We welcome fair competition, but we do not believe companies have the right to copy the Chuck’s trademarked look.”
Although Converse “is suing for monetary damages, its main priority is getting impostors off the shelves,” reports the New York Times’ Rachel Abrams, who broke the story.“The goal really is to stop this action,” Calhoun told Abrams. “I think we’re quite fortunate here to be in the possession of what we would consider to be an American icon.”
This may be one of those rare occasions where “icon” is not overplayed.
“First came the athletes, then the greasers. Then came the nonconformists, the teenagers and finally the baby boomers,” Abrams writes in her lede. “The shoe manufacturer Converse has sold its brand of cool and whiff of rebellion to generations of Americans.”
Tell me ’bout it.
Before they were “Chucks,” they were “Cons” — at least in our neck of the Bronx woods. And we used to walk more than six miles round trip to an Army Navy store on Fordham Road — careful to avoid the fabled greasers (who we actually never saw) — to get them for $14 instead of the standard $16 or so. They came in two colors, white or black, and two styles, high-top or low-top.
by Thom Forbes, MediaPost | Read more:
Image: Earl Wilson/The New York Times
