Puma loses EU trademark challenge over Chinese rival’s stripe design

The court upheld decisions by the European Union Intellectual Property Office, finding no likelihood of confusion between Puma’s established stripe marks and a triangular logo containing a stripe filed by Yukai Zheng, a China-based company.

The ruling highlights the challenges major sporting goods brands face when trying to secure broad trademark protection over common geometric shapes – even when those elements have become strongly associated with the brand through decades of use.

The dispute over stripes

In 2020, Zheng applied to register EU figurative mark No. 018355891 – a rounded triangular shape containing a stripe. The mark covered Class 25 goods including overalls, shirts, clothing and trousers under the Nice Classification system.

Puma opposed the application based on two earlier figurative marks: No. 08461469 and No. 012697066. Both feature the brand’s signature stripe design – a stripe with a flat base that curves upward to the right, gradually tapering into a narrower line with a straight cut-off end. The marks cover clothing, footwear and headgear in Class 25.

Both the EUIPO’s Opposition Division and Board of Appeal rejected Puma’s challenge, finding the marks visually dissimilar despite covering identical goods categories. Puma then escalated the dispute to the General Court.

What the court decided

The General Court ruled that despite both designs featuring a curved, upward-sloping stripe, the overall look was different enough that shoppers wouldn’t mix them up.

“The Board of Appeal had correctly assessed that the average consumer perceives a mark as a whole and does not analyse its details,” the court said.

The ruling follows longstanding EU trademark principles that focus on how a design appears as a whole rather than breaking it down piece by piece. Zheng’s triangular frame, along with different proportions and placement of the stripe, gave it a sufficiently different look from Puma’s standalone stripe designs.

The decision illustrates the tightrope trademark law must walk: protecting brands’ established identifiers while giving competitors enough room to design products in markets where geometric shapes serve both decorative and practical purposes.

Reputation argument fails threshold test

Puma also argued under Article 8(5) of the EU Trademark Regulation, which protects marks with established reputation even against dissimilar goods. The brand claimed the Board of Appeal failed to recognise the reputation of its stripe marks and that consumers could establish a mental link between the competing designs.

The court rejected this argument on procedural grounds. Under EU case law, Article 8(5) protection requires at least weak similarity between the marks. Because the Board of Appeal determined no similarity existed between the marks, Article 8(5) analysis became inapplicable.

“The lack of similarity meant that it was not possible to assess the likelihood of confusion or the link between the marks,” the court concluded.

This threshold determination meant Puma’s evidence of reputation – including decades of market presence and extensive consumer recognition – never reached substantive evaluation. The ruling demonstrates how initial similarity findings can foreclose reputation-based arguments regardless of a mark’s market strength.

Puma’s broader trademark struggles

The General Court’s November ruling reflects a pattern of mixed outcomes for Puma in EU trademark disputes over geometric elements.

In October 2025, the court annulled a Board of Appeal decision that had favoured Puma against Italian industrial machine manufacturer CMS Costruzione macchine speciali SpA. The Board had failed to precisely assess the reputation of Puma’s marks – characterising reputation as “at least average” was insufficient, the court found, and it ordered reconsideration.

Conversely, Puma has won reputation-based challenges at the European Court of Justice when EUIPO boards failed to adequately consider prior decisions establishing trademark recognition.

At the member state level, the Higher Regional Court in Düsseldorf, Germany, ruled in September 2025 that Puma’s form stripe enjoys broad protection in Germany based on decades of intensive use. The court found likelihood of confusion for Spanish-made athletic shoes featuring interrupted stripes, demonstrating that national trademark regimes may offer stronger protection than EU-level opposition proceedings.