What Does Nike's Air Jordan Patent Mean for Sneaker Creativity?

On June 1st 2021 – the latest of a slew of similar intellectual property moves for the brand – Nike was officially granted federal trademark protection in the US for one of its star silhouettes: the Air Jordan 1.

Dishing out registration certificates for the Air Jordan 1 High, Low, and Low SE, the patents effectively put an end to, both, bootlegging and unauthorised modifications: a blow to custom artists trading on the shape of Nike and Michael Jordan’s prized calf and to those literally using the Nike shoe itself as a canvas for their work.

The move itself comes as no surprise: Nike have been on a trademarking spree for some time now, having just won another round of their ongoing dispute with PUMA over the term “footware,” coming off the back of an April 2021 legal altercation with MSCHF over their modified Air Max 97 “Satan Shoes” collaboration with Lil Nas X, and their 2020 pursuit of Warren Lotas for the Reaper sneakers which the brand believed to have borrowed too heavily from the Dunk.

Not everyone sees things Nike’s way, of course. And, while historically this has mostly been a view limited to the kinds of independent creators who stand to benefit from looser regulations, a legal challenge filed this week by a New York-based law firm takes things to a new and considerably more serious level, accusing Nike of fraud in their trademark application.

Still, it’s hard to see the US patent office reversing its decision anytime soon given Nike’s standing as a global household name rooted firmly in America. The trademarking of the Air Jordan 1, like it or not, is pretty much a done deal at this point.

And so, moving forward, the question isn’t whether the ruling will hold but rather what that means for the people whose livelihoods and cultures will be most affected by tighter legislation. To a brand like Nike – a multinational corporation which posted a $10.35 billion dollar revenue for the quarter ending February 28th 2021 – bootlegging is nothing more than an annoyance. Most bootlegs, after all, don’t get anything like the kind of traction of a Lil Nas X “Satan Shoe” – they’re shared throughout the sneaker community, in extremely limited quantities, more often than not at what ends up being the expense of the bootlegger themselves.

But, to the people who make them – who put the painstaking hours into designing and building them often by hand and always with a passion for sneakers at the heart of what they do – and to the people who buy them, bootlegs are something more: they’re a throwback to a time when sneaker design was about craft and about culture, rather than revenue – when time and effort were essential ingredients in every single new silhouette and every permutation of those shoes.

Bootlegging may be trivial to Nike, but to the sneaker community at large it’s an essential practice that adds an element of unpredictability into a marketplace that continues, with every half-cocked iteration, to look more and more like a ghost of its former self.

When, in January 2021, Dexter The Creator and algrindstien came together on a collaborative Air Jordan 1 bootleg – one which effectively brought together all the bootleg iterations of the silhouette dropped over the course of 2020 – they did it for what felt like all the right reasons. They were having fun, they were creating something unique – limited strictly to 50 pairs worldwide – and the $650 USD price point didn’t seem “crazy for an Air Jordan 1,” it felt right for a pair of artisan-crafted sneakers produced in comparatively minuscule quantities.

Neither of the creators will have taken home much cash from endeavour but, even if they did – so what? That’s money earned for time spent. Nike isn’t exactly missing that $32,500. More than that, though – despite what the brand maintains – 50 pairs of handmade sneakers aren’t going to dilute the Nike brand in any kind of meaningful way.

When, through the constant churn of barely-updated silhouettes, sneaker design can feel like it’s barely hanging on there on life support, bootlegging is what keeps that heartbeat going.

In that sense, pulling the plug on bootleggers isn’t just cruel, it’s counterintuitive.