Adidas sues LIV Golf for trademark infringement

Even after making peace with the PGA Tour, LIV Golf just can't seem to avoid litigation.

Front Office Sports reports that the Saudi Arabian golf league is being sued by Adidas, the global apparel maker, for trademark infringement. In aiming to block five trademark applications by LIV, Adidas claims that the 'L' in LIV's logo looks too similar to its iconic 'three stripes' brand.

Adidas filed a Notice of Opposition with the U.S. Patent and Trademark that claims LIV Golf’s logo “incorporate[s] three stripes in a manner that is confusingly similar to the Adidas Marks in appearance and overall commercial impression.”

Trademark infringement cases are notoriously challenging. A legal expert Front Office Sports spoke with said that Adidas is unlikely to win the lawsuit despite its massive resources in support of it, but the two sides could come to a settlement over the matter.

Sports logos are the most ubiquitous and important marks in the world - they define how a team, league or even an individual athlete is identified in an entertainment marketplace teeming full of options to grab a consumer's attention. The more distinctive a logo is, for better or worse, the easier it is for an entity to stand out. 

A case where a sports logo could potentially muddy the waters has been the Washington Nationals, whose insignia has often been referred to as "the Walgreens logo" for how its curly W appears to mimic the retailer's brand, despite borrowing from the city's previous MLB teams. More recently in June 2022, the rebooted XFL was sued by Togethxr, a media and merchandise company founded by Sue Bird, Simone Manuel, Alex Morgan and Chloe Kim, when the football league revealed a brand that it claimed was similar to its own. (That lawsuit was dropped two months later.)

It's debatable if anyone thinks of Adidas when they see LIV's brand or vice versa, but the apparel company seems to believe that the golf outfit has impacted its business because of the logo.