Crocs faces legal dispute regarding 'false advertising' claims

A Canadian footwear brand has successfully secured a federal circuit “win” against Crocs regarding allegations that the foam shoe giant “violated federal false advertising laws with false promotional claims”.

Dawgs has said that Crocs “must return to court” to answer to the aforementioned claims associated with its Croslite material, which it had once claimed was “patented”. Crocs has since admitted to the Federal Circuit that it had in fact never had a patent on this product.

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit sent the case back to federal court in Colorado for further proceedings after “finding that promotional claims Crocs has made since its founding more than 20 years ago” could be seen as “false and deceptive advertising” under the Lanham Act.

Family-owned Dawgs, or Double Diamond Distribution Ltd, had previously lost a case against Crocs in 2022, when the Federal Court of Canada found the company had infringed on Crocs’ Canada 939 design with its Fleece Dawgs shoe.

With this latest claim, Dawgs has contended that Crocs’ “intentional false advertising succeeded in confusing customers” and harmed the company financially, leading it to now seek “ill-gotten profits”. According to Dawgs, Crocs may therefore be “liable for hundreds of millions of dollars as a result”.

In a release, Steve Mann, the CEO of Double Diamond Distribution, said: "This decision is not just a win for us, but for fair competition and for the millions of people who have been harmed by Crocs's fabricated claims and intentional false advertising.

"Crocs has successfully killed off many of its competitors with forever-war litigation, and it has been trying to bury our family-owned business for nearly 20 years. We are laser-focused on making this trial the beginning of the end of Crocs's audacious lies."