The long-running battle between Nike and Adidas for athletic apparel supremacy has a new chapter. The two apparel giants have battled each other for years, with each always trying to stay one step ahead of the other. The competition has gotten fierce enough at times to result in lawsuits over design imitations and other details.
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According to media reports, things recently got taken to a whole new level. Nike has reportedly filed a lawsuit against three of its former designers and claims that they used Nike's secrets to sell themselves to Adidas. The lawsuit was filed in the same county in Oregon where Adidas has its U.S. headquarters.
The suit requests more than $10 million in damages alleges that the three designers were in discussions with Adidas before they ever left Nike. They also allegedly started building blueprints to replicate Nike's famous Innovation Kitchen and stole secrets from the kitchen itself.
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The Innovation Kitchen is where Nike does its most secretive work, testing out shoe concepts and materials years before they ever hit the market. Only a select few individuals even have access to the area.
The design theft extends beyond shoe designs, however, and Nike claims that the designers also took concepts from upcoming uniforms and materials relating to Nike-sponsored athletes. They even took proprietary information relating to Nike's soccer product lines, which is the one area where Adidas already far outpaces Nike.
"All of this information is among the most important and highly confidential information in Nike's athletic footwear business, particularly its global football business," reads the lawsuit. "Disclosure of any of this information would irreparably harm Nike, by, among other things, enabling a competitor to effectively undermine and counter Nike's performance in the athletic markets for the next three to four years."
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