Adidas and White Fox outline stripe dispute as hearing set for 2027

Adidas and White Fox outlined competing arguments over four-stripe clothing in Australia’s Federal Court on 9 October 2026, as Justice Ian Jackman scheduled a hearing for early 2027. Adidas is seeking orders to stop the retailer making the disputed clothing and to recover profits from those products, Australian Associated Press reported.

Following the September filing covered in our earlier report on Adidas’s lawsuit against White Fox, the dispute has now had its first court mention. The new development is the hearing timetable and the parties’ explanation of their positions.

AAP’s account does not report a ruling on whether White Fox infringed Adidas’s trademarks. It gives no exact date for the hearing, and the restrictions and financial remedies Adidas wants have not been reported as awarded.

Why Adidas objects to White Fox’s four stripes

Adidas alleges that White Fox’s four parallel stripes are deceptively similar to its three-stripe trademark. It also claims the online retailer rejected repeated requests to stop selling and promoting clothing bearing the design. Those assertions are Adidas’s account, rather than findings by the court.

Flynn pointed to a promotional photograph showing a White Fox-endorsed influencer wearing the retailer’s four-stripe shorts with genuine Adidas shoes. He argued that this would confuse consumers. The report does not establish that any consumer was actually confused by the promotion.

AAP reports that Adidas has held an Australian trademark for its three-stripe design for more than 50 years. That established reputation forms part of its argument, while White Fox disputes what consumers would understand from its clothing designs.

White Fox argues the stripes are decoration

White Fox’s barrister, Ed Heerey KC, said the company would argue that its four stripes were decorative rather than a trademark. That raises a separate question from whether four stripes look deceptively similar to Adidas’s registered branding: what function the stripes perform on the garments.

Heerey pointed to similar four-stripe clothing from Princess Polly, Glassons and Shein. These were examples advanced in White Fox’s argument; the report does not identify those retailers as parties to this dispute or establish that their products infringed Adidas’s rights.

“Obviously Adidas has a reputation,” Heerey said. “Their own slogan is that it’s the brand with three stripes. Emphasis on the three.” White Fox intends to challenge both deceptive similarity and whether consumers would actually be misled.

What the 2013 Adidas footwear judgment established

Flynn cited Adidas’s successful 2013 Australian action involving four-stripe shoes as evidence that the present claim was not unprecedented. But that earlier dispute concerned footwear, and the parties disagree about its relevance to White Fox’s clothing.

The original judgment, Adidas AG v Pacific Brands Footwear Pty Ltd (No 3), was delivered by Justice Robertson on 12 September 2013. Those proceedings had begun in October 2010.

The judgment identified two contested questions under section 120(1): whether the stripes were used as a trademark, and whether they were deceptively similar to Adidas’s registered marks. Both issues also feature in the arguments described at White Fox’s first court appearance.

In paragraph 14, Robertson rejected both broad propositions that any four stripes on sports shoes necessarily infringed and that four stripes could never infringe because Adidas used three. The judgment therefore did not reduce the footwear dispute to counting stripes.

Heerey argued that the older judgment recognised a common practice of placing branding on the sides of shoes, but that no equivalent practice existed for clothing. That is White Fox’s argument about the precedent, not a determination of the present case.

The remedies sought and White Fox’s business

Adidas wants orders preventing White Fox from making four-stripe clothing and requiring it to surrender profits made from the products. AAP gives no figure for the profits at issue, so the report does not establish the retailer’s potential financial exposure.

White Fox launched in Sydney in 2013 and built its business around social media and influencer marketing, according to AAP. That business background is relevant to the promotional photograph singled out by Adidas’s lawyer.

AAP identifies Georgia and Daniel Contos as White Fox’s co-founders and says they own the company with Daniel’s mother, Melina Maceri. The retailer subsequently expanded into the United States and United Kingdom. The Australian dispute is scheduled to proceed to a hearing in early 2027.