Kanye West has sued Walmart, accusing the retail giant of selling knockoffs of his Yeezy Foam Runners, Business Insider reported.
His lawsuit alleged that Walmart has been profiting from his name by selling foam sliders that look "virtually indistinguishable" from his Yeezy Foam Runners. West is suing to have the shoes removed from Walmart's site, as well as for monetary damages. The suit said the Yeezy brand is worth "billions" of dollars, and the company believes it has suffered damages in the "hundreds of millions of dollars."
When West's slip-on foam sneakers were introduced in 2019 for $75, they garnered some ridicule, with people comparing the shoes to Crocs on social media. Still, the shoes quickly sold out and have since been resold for up to three times their original price, while the Walmart shoes were selling for about $20 to $30, documents filed in a Los Angeles court said.
The lawsuit said that West has built the Yeezy brand on his success as an American icon, and that Walmart is profiting from his image, pointing to celebrities—such as Kim Kardashian, Justin Bieber, and Snoop Dogg—who have been photographed wearing Yeezy shoes.
The Yeezy brand said in the suit that the shoes caught its attention when posts on numerous social-media sites started taking off by advertising that people could buy the shoes, which some users called "budget Yeezys," on Walmart's website. The lawsuit argued that the Walmart shoes would not have sold if they hadn't been recognized as being similar to Yeezys.
The Yeezy brand initially reached out to Walmart on Wednesday to pull the shoes from its online marketplace, but said that, as of its court-filing date on Thursday, Walmart had failed to pull the product.
A Walmart spokesperson told Insider the company is reviewing the claim. An Adidas spokesperson declined to comment.
"The product referenced in the complaint is not sold by Walmart, but rather by third-party Marketplace sellers," the Walmart spokesperson said.
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