Nike’s battle with StockX marketplace heats up with counterfeit claims

Nike filed an amended complaint on Tuesday in a lawsuit against online sneaker marketplace StockX, claiming that it found four counterfeit shoes on its resale website.

The popular shoe company is pushing to prohibit StockX from selling knockoff shoes, accusing the company of counterfeit and false advertisement after it found the four sneakers were branded as “100% authentic” despite not being legitimate Nike shoes.

The primary concern in the lawsuit is the Vault NFTs, which are digital tokens tied to a physical product on StockX. Nike says the NFTs are branded with “unauthorized and infringing use of Nike’s famous marks,” and that StockX is “selling those NFTs at heavily inflated prices to unsuspecting consumers.”

Nike argues that while the lawsuit proceeds, confusion about the Vault NFTs is rampant and hurting its business.

“The consumer confusion caused by StockX’s infringement is now affecting Nike’s recent entry into the NFT market with its genuine Nike-branded NFTs,” the company said.

StockX has not filed a response yet against the claims of four counterfeit shoes on its website.

The company runs a global marketplace for the resale of multiple types of products from third-party sellers, but is most known for shoes.

In a response filed in the initial lawsuit at the end of March, StockX said it verifies all of its products and that its use of NFT products is comparable to how other major e-commerce sites and marketplaces.

“Nike’s Complaint is nothing more than a baseless and misleading attempt to interfere with the application of a new technology to the increasingly popular and lawful secondary market for the sale of its sneakers and other goods,” court documents read.

“Nike’s suit threatens the legitimate use of NFTs not just by StockX, but by other innovators that also use NFTs to track title to physical goods held in a vault, such as fine art, whiskey, and wine,” the response continued.