Kizik sues Skechers over alleged copying of hands-free slip-on shoe
Footwear brand Kizik and its parent company, HandsFree Labs, say they are suing Skechers in federal court, accusing the $9 billion company of ripping off Kizik’s intellectual property with its popular line of slip-on shoes.
HandsFree Labs’s lawsuit, filed Thursday in Texas federal court, specifically takes aim at Skechers’s Hands Free Slip-In shoe line. The case number is 2:25-cv-00744. At issue is whether multiple models of Skechers shoes are willfully ripping off the technology used in Kizik’s shoes that allow people to slip their foot into a sneaker-like shoe without using their hands or tying laces.
The suit comes several months after 3G Capital in May acquired Skechers for a deal valued at $9.43 billion.
“HFL brings this suit to stop Skechers’s rampant infringement, to establish its rightful place as the true pioneer of hands-free shoes, and to obtain its proper share of Skechers’s billions in annual revenue and $9.42 billion acquisition price,” the complaint says.
Skechers did not immediately respond to a request for comment after the lawsuit was filed. But the lawsuit comes at a pivotal time for the growing company after its acquisition. In 2024, Skechers’s last full financial year, the brand reported sales of $8.97 billion, up 12.1% from 2023.
The Hands Free Shoe Line at issue in the complaint launched in 2022 and was popularized in 2023 with a Skechers Super Bowl ad that featured Snoop Dogg, Tony Romo and Martha Stewart.
The 22-page complaint alleges that Skechers infringes on four of Hands Free Labs’s utility patents, as well as two design patents. It asks the court to find that Skechers infringed on HandsFree Labs’s intellectual property, bar Skechers from further copying, and to award Kizik of damages, costs and attorneys’ fees.
But this isn’t the first time Kizik has defended its IP. Earlier this year, it reached an undisclosed settlement with orthopedic footwear company Drew Shoe over allegations of copying its design.
Gareth Hosford, who became CEO of HandsFree Labs in early June, said in a statement sent to Modern Retail on Thursday that hands-free footwear “isn’t just a product Skechers copied, it’s a category we created.” HandsFree Labs launched Kizik in 2017; the company now holds and has filed for more than 200 patents. It has also licensed out its footwear to Nike and has said it is looking to expand such partnerships.
“We poured our energy into developing the technology to solve a real-world problem and make hands-free shoes a reality,” Hosford’s statement said. “We’re now forced to defend that work against a company that chose to imitate rather than innovate.”