MOSCOW, July 8 (RAPSI) - The Supreme Commercial Court has registered an appeal from Adidas AG against a previous ruling which rejected its lawsuit to ban the Lenta hypermarket chain from using the Adidas trademark on the store's goods, the court told RAPSI on Monday.
The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region rejected the company's lawsuit on June 25, 2012. The appeals court and the court of cassation upheld the ruling.
Adidas sought to prohibit the defendants from using the Adidas trademark on products sold by Lenta outlets, including on labels and packaging. The plaintiff also sought the disposal of line of allegedly counterfeit shoes and compensation from Lenta to the value of 2.5 million rubles ($75,245) .
According to the court, the labels on the shoes which caused the dispute differ markedly from the authentic Adidas trademark and are not potentially misleading for customers. The shoes (men's sneakers labeled Escan) were supplied under a contract with InterShoes, which contains a clause guaranteeing that the goods supplied are not subject to any third parties, the court said.
InterShoes is a goods supplier based in Moscow.
"The subject of the dispute is fundamentally different to the plaintiff's trademark," the court ruling reads. In particular, the number of diagonal stripes (four) is clearly different from that on the Adidas label (three) and therefore cannot mislead customers.
Founded in 1993, Lenta operates a network of hypermarkets. Its head office is in St. Petersburg, and it operates 40 stores in Russia. Adidas AG is the core company of the Adidas Group.