A Yeezy Trademark Battle

Kanye West and Walmart are currently in the midst of a heated legal battle concerning the sale of shoes strikingly similar to ones sold by the hip-hop icon.

Yeezy, LLC has trademarked the Foam Runner with a retail price of $80, while the Walmart version of this shoe sold for only $30.

West sued Walmart for trademark infringement, claiming that the knockoff footwear is unrightfully profiting off a nonexistent connection to West, and confusing customers who believe that they are buying legitimate Yeezy products.

Since Yeezy, LLC has in fact trademarked the design and brand of this shoe, they do have legal claim to say Walmart is copying their shoes design.

“Walmart is flagrantly trading off of his and Yeezy brand’s popularity by offering for sale an imitation version of the Yeezy Foam Runner," said Yeezy's complaint. "The Yeezy brand is worth ‘billions’ of dollars, and the potential loss from the imitation shoes in the ‘hundreds of millions.”

In addition, West can claim that Walmart is wrongfully deceiving customers, as they think they are buying a West-designed shoe when in fact they are not. Walmart never received any consent or entered into any contract with Yeezy, LLC, so they are in the wrong on this case.

Walmart's defense is that they did not manufacture these shoes, but rather a Marketplace seller did, and that Walmart is simply selling them. By profiting off their sale however, Walmart is in fact violating trademark law by benefitting from the sale of a counterfeit product.

As a result, these shoes have in fact been pulled from Walmart shelves nationwide and online. However, these ripoff shoes are still publicly available through third-party vendors.

While Walmart was not in the wrong for manufacturing this product, they were still benefitting from its sale by receiving a commission of each unit sold. Walmart was diluting the market for the West-made shoes, by offering the same product for a fraction of the price. By looking at the photo above, it is quite difficult to distinguish the real shoe from the fake, thus Kanye West and Yeezy's argument does hold legal merit.