Online retailer posted AU$542m in twelve months to June 2025

Adidas said in its Federal Court filings that it had asked White Fox to stop selling and promoting the four-striped clothes since at least March, and that the Sydney-based company had refused. The German sportswear company’s three-striped design has “a substantial and valuable reputation” in Australia, the documents state, where the brand has been trademarked since 1957. Adidas reported €24.8 billion (£21bn; $28bn) in revenue in 2025.

White Fox’s four-striped garments are “substantially identical with or otherwise deceptively similar” to the Adidas design, the court filings say. Adidas also alleged that White Fox’s advertisements for four-striped clothes and White Fox-branded socks feature people wearing “genuine” Adidas items, which it said might lead Australian consumers to think Adidas was associated with and had approved of White Fox’s products.

The documents describe White Fox as “taking advantage” of Adidas’s reputation, “drawing an association in the minds of consumers” of the two brands, or at least “sailing close to the wind.”

Evidence Adidas submitted included side-by-side comparisons of its products with White Fox garments — sweatpants and lounge shorts — and images of White Fox billboards on buses and at bus stops. In one example, Adidas said that an online listing from June 2025 showed a pair of White Fox-branded socks modelled by a person wearing pink Adidas shoes.

According to Adidas, a few days after the court proceedings were lodged last month, the Adidas logo on the shoes was digitally altered in the image to remove one of the stripes, and a week later, all three stripes were scrubbed from the picture.

The Australian law firms representing Adidas and White Fox both declined to comment on the case.

White Fox was launched in 2013 and has built a growing presence in the US, having expanded into the UK market in 2024. In the 12 months to June 2025, the company generated AU$542m (£286m; $377m) in revenue, a four-fold jump from its 2022 figure of $121m, according to the Australian Financial Review. The privately held company relies on billboards, bus advertising and influencers — often university-aged — to reach its core audience of teenagers and young adults in Australia, the UK and the US.

Adidas previously won an Australian trademark case in 2013, when it sued Pacific Brands over four-striped shoes.