'Satan Shoes' to be recalled as Nike agrees to settle lawsuit
bbc.com
bbc.com
> Limited edition shoes can fetch higher prices among collectors so it is not clear how many - if any - customers will return the products.
No one who received these will return these for the original price, they're already worth orders of magnitude more as it is. This is all pretty meaningless.
Why would anyone return these? If anything, it sounds to me like this is YET another layer of MSCHF playing Nike like a fiddle. By ordering this "recall", the value of those shoes shot up even higher.
That's not necessarily it: if you don't enforce your trademarks you stand to lose them. Band-aid, dry ice, dumpster, escalator...
This is a widespread myth.
Trademarks don't come up with any duty to enforce, and there is no penalty, explicit or implied, for not doing so. You don't even give up your right to sue tomorrow for something done today unless you have given some sort of explicit undertaking not to sue, in which case Estoppel applies to that specific case.
For example if Nike told famous artist Bob Smith that they won't sue him for his limited run of 1000 hilarious "Just Fuck It" posters with the logo and style of Nike's "Just Do It", they can't wake up the next day and sue him anyway - estoppel prevents that from happening.
But say Bob is thrilled by how well those thousand sell, and commissions a T-shirt, $50 each, with the same image. That's not what Nike agreed to, estoppel doesn't apply, they can sue.
Or suppose Bob's rival Alex Lincoln sees the posters and decides hey, I can make "Just Fuck Off" posters, Nike don't have to humour that either, they haven't agreed not to sue Alex so they can no problem.
> if you don't enforce your trademarks you stand to lose them
That has nothing to do with the article, yes.
When I say "myth" I mean, very specifically, that many people like you "know" this falsehood. What you're doing here is just underscoring how widespread the myth is.
"But I really believe it" doesn't stop it being a myth, neither does "But lots of people I know believe it". In fact if nobody believed it then it wouldn't be a myth - for example "Cheese is made exclusively by alligators from the tears of French Kings" isn't a myth because nobody believes that.
You can end up triggering Estoppel or Laches if you are sufficiently lax in enforcement, but your rights don't magically dissolve if you choose not to sue everybody who might be argued to use your mark. Nike could (and in the past have for similar works) just ignored this infringement.
Lego's big problem in Europe is that they would prefer if they were the only people who get to make building blocks, if other building blocks have to be needlessly incompatible then everybody will buy Lego, but if compatible blocks are allowed (which the EU says they must be) then you can just buy "real" Lego for Luke Skywalker and a Snowspeeder and then use cheap compatible Chinese blocks with your local store's brand for the white blocky Hoth landscape. That cuts into Lego profits. Too bad. But the cheap Chinese block makers don't pretend what they're making is "Lego" it doesn't have the Lego logo, it just fits together nicely.
They just got way more valuable. There is no upside at all to returning them.
I wonder if Nike ever had any intent of winning this case, had it reached court. Given the First Sale Doctrine, I don't know what Nike could do to prevent their customers (MSCHF included) from reselling modified Nike apparel.
(Cannot emphasize enough IANAL)
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuYd4RP0_qk
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trademark_dilution#Blurring_an...
Nike got to save face in court and pretend like they really cared about not being associated with "satanists". Their "edgier" customers probably think it's cool that Nike's shoes were the base for this, and their conservative customers saw them as fighting against cultural decadence.
This was marketing genius all the way around.
Nas X and MSCHF knew this product would create huge viral, mostly negative, social media buzz.
Outrage sells now.
Arguably; the 2010's are the first decade I've maybe seen without a serious incident like this I can recall, what with Eminem (and a lot of other rappers) firmly occupying the 00's.
1990's had artists such as Nirvana, Marylin Manson, and the turn of the 90's featured the controversy of N.W.A., Ice Cube, etc.
The 1980's, before the rise of rap in the late 80's; featured the metal movement, with often overtly Satanic lyrics and imagery such as inverted pentagrams. Christians would often gather and burn albums by Metallica, Alice Cooper, etc.
The 1970's continued the themes of psychedelia and occultism that first occurred in the 1960's, and albums by artists like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and (introducing!) Black Sabbath, were; again - super controversial, not to mention the burgeoning punk scene.
The 1960's turned rock and roll into just rock; and you bet your ass those Beatles worshipped Satan, don't ya know! The 'bigger than Jesus' comment would remain in music history forever. The Beatniks and their pill-popping would raise eyebrows all over the world.
The 1950's featured the hip-swinging movements of Elvis Presley, who was certainly corrupting the youth of the time, infusing them with ideas of promiscuous behaviour. :O
That's probably about where I lose the plot, myself. I know jazz was controversial, but I don't know enough about the specific history around it beyond the obvious racial implications.
So you can certainly go back more than 50 years and find one or more of these 'controversy-mongerers' every decade for sure. :)
Outrage has always sold. Outrage goes Platinum. ;)
https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1537602/super-bowl-h...
2004 - "Despite, or maybe because of, controversy generated by their halftime appearance, sales for three of Jackson's albums more than doubled in the week after the show, while Timberlake's Justified increased 160%."
( I am not saying this was not an accident, just that outrage likely contributed to sales )
I also think it’s interesting that pretty much all of these themes have existed in music for the last 50 years or so but for a song to get real outrage it really needs to penetrate the ether. For example, the company selling these shoes sold ones with holy water in the heels, that a very small, in comparison, number of people knew about. I’d consider something like that sacrilegious, but I didn’t hear of any public outrage.
Was this the case in the US? Not in Europe at least.
Seems like Marylin Manson had that covered 20 years ago with albums such as 'Antichrist Superstar', and Alice Cooper before him...
Outrage doesn't just sell now. Outrage pretty much goes platinum, as long as it's the thing that's causing the most outrage at that moment.
Outrage sells partly because it is a statement to support an artist, art or products that 'average' people find outrageous. It's a classic case of kids just needing to rebel.
This video covers it in pretty good depth. https://youtu.be/GuYd4RP0_qk
Nike felt the way the shoes were marketed and sold was confusing enough that people might assume these were official Nike shoes.
If you're speaking about the resale doctrine when you say "right of first" in trademark law it appears that altering the goods so they are materially different is where the line is drawn.if you substantially alter them, it sounds like you don't retain the rights and protections under the resellers doctrine.
Reminds me of a scene in Billions last year with Wendy Rhoades and Taylor Mason. Taylor walked in the office and said they were atheist.
Wendy asked to buy their soul for $10 and gave them a piece of paper to sign.
There was a awkwardly long pause...
Sure, Nike perhaps does not really care. But deep inside, the cultural programming says its not a good look.
If I could sell my multitudes of souls to millions of people for $10 apiece I would do it in a heartbeat.
But most people would feel that after the first sale I was defrauding them, so I suspect it wouldn't be worth the effort to try.
Then in the fine print, add that you’re allowed to monitor how they use it and that information belongs to you to monetize.
That feature is about the only thing I really do like regarding NFT's for artists.
Highly recommended to understand the legal aspects of this case and will probably cover any legal questions you may have about it (First Sale, Trademark Infringement, Parody protection etc.)
The artists’ lawyer claims this was a comment on “absurd collaboration culture” between brands and artists. Just kidding, it was a joke!
If your joke is not funny enough to be distinguishable from a real brand collaboration then you can expect to called out for straight up trademark infringement.
I doubt anyone thinks Nike is doing collabs with religious figures.
Do you think that there were people who actually believe Nike collaborated with Satan?
Knowing they're made by Nike to start doesn't make his campaign any less misleading; as - obviously - I had no idea this was the case until I just found out, for example...
It was pretty misleading and the dude probably could've found a shoe manufacturer to actually support him, Satan and all. Probably just not Nike.
I think it's different because they started out as actual Nike shoes
I don't even understand the legal grounds for the suit - you can do whatever you want to a product you own, and you can modify and resell it as you please. Maybe there were no legal grounds - could be that Nike was just using the suit as a vehement public statement that they're not involved with the product.
Not if companies like Apple and Tesla had their way...
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20210330/09283346519/nike-...