After Nike filed a lawsuit against StockX over the latter’s sneaker NFTs in February, the resale marketplace is responding today with a new filing in the southern district of New York.
In the response, which is accompanied by an abbreviated version on StockX’s news site, the Detroit-based company calls Nike’s lawsuit a “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 good.” It argues Nike’s claims lack merit and disregard already established trademark laws.
StockX stresses that its Vault NFTs are not virtual products or so-called digital sneakers, and instead are merely tokens tied to already authenticated products in its warehouse. This, StockX argues, provides users the benefit of bypassing the sometimes lengthy turnaround of getting a pair authenticated. The response states that the NFTs themselves have no inherent value and cannot be traded separately from their associated physical item.
“The benefit of taking possession of the Vault NFT…is that the owner can make a future trade without incurring transaction costs, delay, or risk of damage or loss associated with shipping physical sneakers to StockX and then to the ultimate recipients,” the filing reads. On its website response, StockX also touts the apparent reduced environmental impact of repeated shipping allowed by the NFTs.
StockX says it has released 11 Vault NFT sneakers thus far from brands including Nike, Adidas, and Puma. The styles were chosen because they were the best-selling products with sufficient sizes in physical product available.
The resale giant argues the NFTs are no different than product images used by e-commerce websites to sell sneakers and other goods.
“The use of NFTs to digitally track ownership of physical products is not only lawful, but also increases efficiency for and decreases costs to consumers, promotes sustainability, and should not be disturbed,” StockX says.
Nike did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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