Walmart has filed a complaint with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over a proposed logo design by Kanye West’s Yeezy brand, saying the symbol looks too much like its own.
The retail giant filed the complaint on April 21, arguing that West’s logo is likely to cause confusion and lead to consumer deception.
Both logos resemble the sun. Walmart’s design has thick lines that resemble sunrays while West’s proposed logo has dotted lines that look like sunlight. Walmart has been using its sun-like logo since 2007 while Yeezy filed documents for its proposed logo in January 2020.
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“Walmart believes the logo design depicted in the Yeezy Application is confusingly similar to Walmart’s well-known spark logo design,” CNN cited a letter by Walmart opposing the logo. The retail company added that the logo from West could cause potential “false affiliation” between the two brands, and this could damage the brand of Walmart.
Walmart said it communicated with the billionaire rapper in July and August 2020 as well as the first three months of the year. The company added that it was yet to receive any conclusive information from Yeezy regarding the planned use or any cooperation from Yeezy in order to find common ground.
Yeezy, West’s sneaker/apparel partnership with Adidas, is worth between $3.2 billion and $4.7 billion, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. The rapper owns a 100% stake in Yeezy and also has a partnership with The Gap which is valued at $1 billion.
West has additional income coming from his $110 million music catalog as well as $122 million in cash and stocks and business investments with his estranged wife Kim Kardashian’s SKIMS underwear brand.
Bloomberg reports that Gap expects its Yeezy line to break $150 million in sales in its first full year in 2022 and envisions it becoming a billion-dollar revenue brand in 2023. The documents also showed that sales for Yeezy’s Adidas sneakers survived the effect of the pandemic by posting a growth of 31% and making nearly $1.7 billion in revenue while netting $191 million in royalties.
