Adidas has filed a lawsuit against Forever 21 for counterfeiting and violating trademark laws.

For decades Adidas has placed the 3-stripes striping on clothing and footwear and has invested millions of dollars building its brand in connection with the ‘three-stripe mark”.

Adidas says it owns numerous “incontestable federal trademark registrations” for the design. Despite that, the company claims Forever 21 is “designing, sourcing, manufacturing, disturbing, marketing, promoting, offering for sale, and/or selling apparel bearing identical and/or confusingly similar imitations of Adidas’ Three-Strip Mark.”

Image via KOIN 6 News

Adidas claims (the photo above) are examples of the identical or confusingly similar imitations of the Three-Strip Mark.  The lawsuit claims the merchandise is “likely to cause confusion, deceive the public regarding its source, and dilute and tarnish the distinctive quality of Adidas”.

Adidas is asking a federal judge to prevent Forever 21 from distributing, marketing or selling clothing that bears either “identical or confusingly similar imitations of the Three-Strip Mark” and wants to be awarded monetarily to “disgorge all profits from sales of the counterfeit and/or infringing apparel.”