Nike is sueing Adidas over the Nike Shox shoe patent, which Nike believes was stolen to be used in many of Adidas training shoes.

“Despite Nike’s patent protection, Adidas has built shoes that use Nike’s technology,” Nike spokesman Vada Manager said on Thursday. [...] The Adidas trainers Nike claims infringe its patents all use Adidas’ a3 cushioning system, such as its new Kevin Garnett signature shoe, named after a popular US basketball player.

Adidas recently bought Reebok, and is the second largest sportswear manufacturer. Nike is the largest. This strikes me as being a power struggle between the big boys, where Adidas is going to claim that their shoes do not have nothing more than a passing resemblance to Nike’s patents and that it is an independantly developed and completely seperate technology. It looks similar and does the same thing, but in a different way. Nike will just be trying to consolidate its position as the big dog, and if Adidas did infringe upon their patents then I hope they win.

Of course, the real winner, I hope, is the smaller firms. Hopefully they can gain some momentum while the big boys are distracted and get a little market share, especially if Adidas has to a dozen of their brands off the market. I do not really see this as likely, however.