i guess my question is…being that all these brands basically take ‘inspiration’ from whatever the next sneaker company is having success with, how much weight do you think their lawsuit will hold? if the lawsuit sticks, will that affect other companies who are all putting out the same product (chuck’s rip-offs, vans rip-offs, dunk and air force 1 rip-offs, just to name a few) with just a few minor branding changes?
This lawsuit is probably not gonna do anything. Skechers is a rip-off brand and the whole mbt type shoe is a fad anyway. I don’t even consider it thought worthy footwear.
What do you mean by chuck and vans rip-offs? Do you mean low-end brands and some fashion clothing brands that make exact copies of a chuck or a Vans (let’s say the oft mentioned Authentic)? Or do you think rip-offs are also casual footwear that follow more or less the same silhouette?
I mean the same exact shoe, just rebranded. Bapesta and Air Force, Toms and Bobs, the list goes on. Let’s be real, every company does it, and while I can appreciate having a choice between a Chuck Taylor made by Converse and a Chuck Taylor made by Ralph Lauren, it’s basically the same shoe, with the price being dictated by the name brand.
Oh, absolutely those are rip-offs. Bape is the biggest joke ever. I also think it’s ridiculous when I see fashion brands like Ralph Lauren or Diesel do a chuck. I never understood what’s up with that since it’s so incredible easy for these companies to just come up with a similar type of shoe but that’s still different in every single line.
I thought you might also classify similar silhouettes as rip-offs. I can’t stand it when this happens. Usually consumers are the ones that do this and often this is some kid who deems himself pretty knowledgeable on the subject. They say a certain shoe is a rip-off of a Vans authentic because it’s a vulcanized cvo. Oh, man that gets me going.
naw. you’re talking to a guy who can tell the difference between an adidas top ten, a decade and a nizza…because there’s a difference. there’s no difference between the bob’s that skechers puts out and tom’s. thetre’s a branding difference between the bapesta and the air force 1, but that’s not enough of a change to warrant the price. gourmet started out by making blatant rip-offs of famous jordan silhouette’s, but i’m still on the fence about how i feel about that…partially because i like the xi’s and would buy them in any incarnation, and partly because i hate duchamp.
About gourmet, somehow I have never really got to like them. I’m not sure if I am interpreting my feelings right but there’s just too much attitude that comes with the brand. It makes me uncomfortable. Clae would be my pick out of those new hybrid-y brands.
I am really not a sneaker head per se, however I do appreciate fashion.
Regarding to this thread I have never really understood what Common Projects are doing.
I guess their business model is to take iconic styles and then elevate them by jacking up the price.
The very much Vans Authentic looking kicks below are $400!!
i mean the swagger jackin these days is horrible…but knockoffs or knockups for that matter will always exist especially when corporations like sears feel they can capitalize of a trend. Sketchers needs to suit more than just Sears but other brands as well…the weird thing is they might not win the lawsuit if sears didnt actually steal tech ideas from sketchers…which makes the knockoff or knockup(thats knockoff sold at an outrageous price) industry a multi-billion $$ industry…an ol head in the doc. Schmatta talked unapologetically about making knockoffs…as long as there are fashion designers make cool shit knockoff guys will always copy…the bigger question is: who are these knockoff designers?
There is a lot to be said on this topic, but i will summarize my feelings with a couple bullet points, strictly my personal opinion:
cheap, as well as, overpriced knockoffs (which one is really worse?) are definitely annoying from a design point of view but are just part of the business. I have learned to be more at ease about it by looking at it this way… how many of these brands have been in business successfully (not when were they founded) for over 10 years? not many. Once a brand has done that then i will start putting more care into what they are doing from a strategy standpoint. how many of these brands will still be in business in a meaningful way 5 years from now… again, probably not many.
Of all these fashion/streetwear brands (fill in the blank with any one of the ‘hot’ ones now) that are doing overpriced knockoffs of classic shoes from brands that have a history and heritage, how many of them existed pre-year 2000. with some money and web/social media marketing and maybe a rapper wearing your shoe in a video, its not hard to get a streetwear brand off the ground. If you make your name on doing wannabe chucks and air force ones and nothing original and trying to charge twice as much… good luck staying in business after the initial fad of your ‘cool streetwear brand’ wears off… as it always does.
regarding sketchers/sears, whatever, which is almost a separate issue, albeit related… there are tons of shoe designs out there without patents, in which case its fair game, no matter how sleazy it is, to copy it. For most CEO’s its about business and making money, not being original. if there is a patent on the design then the law hopefully will take its course.
You can patent a technology, but not an aesthetic, right? I mean, companies have taken a shoe design line for line and nothings’s been done, so sears must have straight up jacked the entire shoe and just rebranded it as their own.
I like to say that Skechers is not a shoe brand with a legal department, they’re a law firm with a shoe department.
I used to be disgusted by their shamelessness, then I begrudgingly respected their blatant copying, now I’m flat out impressed with their ballsiness.
I still won’t wear them though.
Oh yeah, another one that is in the same league as Bape (bapesta) is billionaire boys club. It’s more or less the same people behind it and they 1:1 copy converse, vans and many others and then give them the ugliest makeover ever.
you can get design patents on upper patterns, outsole designs ets, but they only last so long and most companies dont do it (due to cost im assuming?). Yo would probably have more insight here. I will see nike upper design patents every now and then, but mostly what i see is jimmy choo, they patent almost all of their upper designs, which makes sense, i mean payless can make a shoe that looks exactly like the jimmy choo from 5 feet away for 10% of the price.
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