Intellectual Property » Nike Takes PR Hit When Slashed Shoes Are Found In Trash

Nike Takes PR Hit When Slashed Shoes Are Found In Trash

February 2, 2017

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A man in a tuxedo, heading for a night out in New York, walked past a dumpster, and a clear plastic bag full of shoes caught his eye. He recalled that at his girlfriend’s apartment in Brooklyn, people would leave discarded clothes outside their door and soon they would be snatched up by people who could use them, so later that night he and a friend decided to return to the dumpster so they could do something similar with the bag of shoes. The shoes turned out to be Nikes, each one slashed cleanly with a blade so as to be unusable. That apparently was policy at this Nike store in Soho. This story, along with a recap of something similar that had occurred at an H&M store several years go, and a brief and not very satisfactory explanation from the brand and the Nike retailer’s point of view, made the New York Times. As it happened, H&M in its case changed its policy after the publicity: It agreed to donate its unsold merchandise to charity. In a similar scenario, some big brands do nothing of the sort, however. Tons of counterfeit merchandise gets destroyed by law, and an IP lawyer explains why.

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