Nike Trademark Digital Shoes and Accessories for Metaverse

After it was revealed last week that Facebook intend to invest $10 billion into their explorations of the metaverse, Nike are the next huge company to make moves to bring their clothing and footwear offerings into the digital sphere.

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A trademark application filed last month on behalf of the sportswear giant sought protections for a range of Nike-branded "downloadable virtual goods" including footwear, clothing, bags, sport equipment, toys and accessories for use in "online virtual worlds".

The company were also recently spotted to be hiring for the position of "Virtual Material Designer" in the footwear and clothing category, a role which would include "exploring, iterating and visualising new material concepts", underscoring that they're taking their forays into the upcoming virtual landscape seriously.

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This isn't the first suggestion that the brand are looking to the digital era, having filed a patent in 2019 for "Cryptokicks", a program which would link physical products to an NFT in order to verify authenticity and ownership.

The patent also included an idea for technology which could see multiple sneaker designs merged into a new design, giving users the ability to "breed" shoes to gather to create "shoe offspring" which could then be made into a new physical pair.