Moulded footwear company Crocs has found itself at the centre of a dispute over trade dress and computer fraud. USA Dawgs sued Crocs on July 27 at the US District Court for the District of Nevada, alleging that the brand had copied one of Dawgs’s sandals. Nevada-based Dawgs said it had developed, manufactured and sold a “distinct Z-shaped upper” for sandals that is intended to fit over the top of a wearer’s foot and look like a “Z”. Crocs’s ‘Women's Swiftwater Sandal is confusingly similar, according to Dawgs.
That’s not all—Crocs, and three of its employees, has been accused of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “in an intentional and successful effort to deprive Dawgs of sales of its products”. Dawgs claimed that a Croc employee who had formerly worked at e-commerce platform Zulily had accessed its private account and sought to have Zulily cancel Dawgs’s sales promotion, which Zulily allegedly did.

Source: WIPR