Adidas has filed trademark applications for a new interpretation of its famous three stripes. Instead of three straight bands, the proposed mark curves and tapers upward, turning one of sport’s most familiar symbols into something closer to a set of sweeping lines. The paperwork is genuine, although Adidas hasn’t announced plans for a company-wide rebrand.
The applications concern footwear, where the shape of a stripe has always carried particular weight. On a shirt, Adidas has room for badges, crests and campaign graphics. On a football boot, three bands along the side can identify the manufacturer before anyone spots the tongue. The Thrasher-inspired Predator worn by Rodrigo De Paul earlier this year offers another example of how the boot has become a place for visual experiments, without requiring Adidas to change its corporate identity.
The U.S. application, numbered 50142442 and filed on October 2, describes three curved, tapered stripes. It covers footwear, makes no claim to a particular color and remains pending examination. The corresponding European application dates to June 17, while a UK Intellectual Property Office journal lists the British filing on August 6. Those records establish a design Adidas wants to protect. They don’t identify a launch model or a date when the mark might reach stores.
Seen on its own, the graphic is strikingly different from the familiar straight stripes. Each band starts broad before narrowing into an elevated tip. The three lines remain separate, but their shared movement gives the mark an almost aerodynamic quality. It’s easy to imagine the design running along the side of a shoe. That’s an observation about its shape, not confirmation of where Adidas intends to put it.
Adidas hasn’t announced that the new artwork will replace its three-bar Performance logo or the Trefoil used by Originals. Filing a trademark can protect a design for a particular product category without making it the face of the entire business. The footwear description is particularly significant here: it points toward shoes, not automatically to jerseys, retail signage or every Adidas product.
How Predator has reshaped Adidas three stripes
For more than three decades, Predator boots have allowed Adidas to adjust how the three stripes look without giving up their identity. The Predator began in 1994, and the Accelerator and Precision became visual reference points for later generations. In 2021, Adidas made the stripes wrap around the Predator Freak, explicitly drawing on those older models. Its 2025 Predator also brought back wavy lines that ran through the stripes in a tribute to the 1998 Accelerator.
Stadio has covered that cycle of reinvention before, including the Energy Citrus Predator’s tribute to the 1998 design. Adidas has kept returning to distinctive details, from the fold-over tongue to the patterns that frame the stripes, rather than relying on an entirely unfamiliar silhouette. A different arrangement of the stripes could follow that tradition, although the trademark records don’t tell us which boot, if any, will use it.
The latest boots make the historical connection unusually timely. On October 6, Adidas released a David Beckham Predator and a Predator Precision Remade to mark 25 years since Beckham’s free kick against Greece in 2001. The modern special edition puts the Trefoil on a Predator and repeats it inside the three stripes themselves. Adidas is already treating its footwear markings as design elements that can carry several periods of football history at once.
The company’s own 2025 annual report still distinguishes between the three-bar logo for Performance and the Trefoil for Originals. No public Adidas statement has tied the curved trademark to a replacement for those symbols. None of the applications identifies a Predator model, and Adidas hasn’t publicly confirmed which shoe will carry the new mark.
The new mark is a small shift in drawing, but it opens a specific design possibility: stripes that follow the motion of a boot rather than simply sitting on it. Whether Adidas puts them on a Predator or another shoe, the company’s most recognizable feature could look different without becoming unrecognizable. For now, the new stripes exist on the trademark record, not on an officially announced football boot.
