In January 2020, Kanye West’s company Yeezy filed a trademark application for a new logo that resembles the rays of a sun. As Law360 noted on Friday, Walmart is now opposing that application in a complaint to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that it filed last week, claiming that the proposed logo looks similar enough to its own that it could “potentially create a false affiliation” between the two brands, deceive consumers about the origins of Yeezy goods, and dilute the “distinctive value” of Walmart’s logo.
While West and his work have garnered consistent attention for roughly two decades, Walmart said in its objection that the possibility of confusion between the two logos is exacerbated by its own relationship to pop culture. The company noted that 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 Sofía Vergara to name a few.”
A representative for West didn’t immediately return a request for comment. When reached for comment, a representative for Walmart pointed to a letter that the company sent to Yeezy lawyers on April 19, saying that it had tried to resolve the issue by discussing with Yeezy “ways in which the Walmart Spark Design and the Yeezy Application can co-exist with one another.” The letter added, “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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