Nike Slams StockX Authentication, Says Marketplace Sent Fake Air Jordans
Written by SOURCE on May 11, 2022
Things have been quiet in recent weeks on the Nike vs. StockX NFT lawsuit front, but that changed Tuesday after the Swoosh issued a declaration in support of motion filing in the Southern District of New York.
The new filing amends Nike’s original complaint against StockX, adding updated findings the sportswear company is using in its lawsuit against the marketplace. The most damning of the added statements include Nike’s claim that it purchased four counterfeit pairs of purported Nikes through StockX between December 2021 and January 2022.
Only one of the four pairs is mentioned by name, the “Patent Bred” Air Jordan 1 High OG (or the Black/Varsity Red-White colorway as Nike refers to it in the filing). This is significant because the sneaker is not only one of the eight StockX Vault NFTs Nike says is infringing on its trademarks, but it’s StockX’s best-selling sneaker NFT with 518 sold at the time of the amendment.
“All [of the pairs] had affixed to them StockX’s ‘Verified Authentic’ hangtag, and all came with a paper receipt from StockX in the shoe box stating that the condition of the shoes is ‘100% Authentic,’” Nike’s filing reads. It calls out StockX’s return policy (or lack thereof) making it even more important for customers to be able to trust Nike shoes purchased through the platform are not counterfeit.
The filing takes aim at StockX’s “somehow proprietary” authentication process, noting that the marketplace claims to use over 100 data points and that its “authenticators are better equipped than anyone” to verify a shoe’s legitimacy, “despite the fact that StockX is not the entity that designed, created, manufactured, packaged, or shipped in the first instance any genuine Nike goods.”
Nike raises concerns that StockX sources its so-called “Vault” shoes from the same marketplace and that they undergo the same authentication process as the alleged fake pairs it received. “Nike is all the more concerned that StockX has linked the infringing Nike-branded NFTs to counterfeit goods and sold those ‘claim tickets’ to fake shoes at heavily-inflated prices to consumers who had no opportunity to inspect the shoes before reselling the NFT to another unsuspecting consumer,” the updated complaint says.
Beyond Nike’s claims of receiving fake sneakers, it provides updates on StockX’s “trivial, post-hoc” attempts to defend itself. It says that despite any changes, StockX has still not removed or modified its use of Nike’s trademarks on its Vault NFTs. It also responds to StockX’s argument that the NFTs are tied to physical product, noting that a recent message from StockX states that the redemption process is currently not available.
StockX did not respond to a request for comment.
