It’s a head-to-head few saw coming. Then again, nothing should surprise us in 2021.
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Walmart has filed an objection with the US Patent and Trademark Office over a logo Kanye West used for his Yeezy LLC in January 2020, the New York Post reports. The retailer describes West’s “rays from a sun” logo as looking too familiar to the logo Walmart has used for the past 13 years.
West’s company said their design could be used in conjunction with sneakers, underwear, T-shirts, furniture, modular homes, and potential hotel services. The New York Post cites legal papers calling the eight lines that are made up of three dots to form a circle as “rays.”
Walmart is claiming that West’s logo looks just like their 13 year-old mark. The only difference is Walmart’s sun rays are made up of lines rather than dots.
In legal papers that were filed, Walmart claimed that the Yeezy logo will create “confusion” and a “false suggestion of a connection” between the two brands.
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Walmart has also taken issue with West’s plans to use the logo for entertainment purposes. The company claims it “has sold products and done marketing campaigns in association with Jennifer Garner, the cast of Queer Eye, Drew Barrymore, Kendall and Kylie Jenner, Ellen DeGeneres, and Sofia Vergara to name a few.”
The New York Post also published a letter Walmart sent to Yeezy’s lawyers showing that efforts to settle the matter have gone nowhere.
“As we referenced in our correspondence in July and August of 2020, January and February of 2021 and our telephone conference in March of 2021, Walmart has repeatedly sought to understand Yeezy’s planned use of the Yeezy Application, with the goal of finding ways in which the Walmart Spark Design and the Yeezy Application can co-exist with one another,” the letter states. “However, to date, we have not received any conclusive information from Yeezy regarding the planned use or any cooperation from Yeezy in order to find common ground.”
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