On Sunday, April 26, 2026, Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe did something most physiologists, coaches, and even Eliud Kipchoge had told us would take another decade. He ran 26.2 miles through the streets of London in 1 hour, 59 minutes, and 30 seconds — the first sub-two-hour marathon ever recorded under legal, record-eligible race conditions. Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha crossed eleven seconds later in 1:59:41, in his marathon debut no less. Two men under two hours, on the same morning, on the same course.
It was a stunning athletic moment. It was also a stunning intellectual property moment. Both runners were wearing the same shoe: the brand-new Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3. And tucked inside that 97-gram slipper of carbon, foam, and rubber sits a small portfolio of legal rights — patents, trade dress, trademarks, and trade secrets — that helped make the impossible legal, marketable, and protectable.
As an IP lawyer who has spent years counseling product companies on how to wrap protection around physical innovations, I find moments like this irresistible. So let’s walk through what is actually being protected when a shoe like this hits the start line.
Utility Patents: The Science Underfoot
The most important IP layer in a “super shoe” is the utility patent. A utility patent protects how something works — its function — and the Pro Evo 3 is a stack of functional inventions sitting on top of each other.
Adidas has publicized three of them: a new LIGHTSTRIKE Pro Evo foam compound engineered for higher energy return per gram; a carbon-fiber-infused stiffening element seated between the foam and outsole to control flex; and a redesigned forefoot outsole geometry tuned for traction at marathon pace. Each of these is the kind of feature that, in patent terms, can support multiple independent claims. The foam is a composition-of-matter invention. The plate-and-foam architecture is a structural invention. The outsole geometry is a design-for-performance invention. Each can be claimed and prosecuted separately, and each can be licensed, enforced, or designed around independently.
This stacked-claim strategy is the same playbook Nike used a decade ago when its ZoomX foam and Vaporfly carbon plate launched the modern super-shoe era. Nike’s portfolio became so thick that competitors spent years either litigating around it or paying to play. The Pro Evo 3 represents Adidas’s answer: its own patent thicket, built from the ground up, designed to give Adidas the same defensive moat Nike enjoyed at the dawn of carbon-plated racing.
The 40-Millimeter Wall
There is a second, less obvious legal layer: the regulatory ceiling. World Athletics caps the maximum stack height of road racing shoes at 40 millimeters. The Pro Evo 3’s stack is reportedly 39 millimeters — exactly one millimeter under the limit. That is not an accident. It is engineering against a rule.
For an IP lawyer, this is fascinating because it shapes what is worth patenting in the first place. Once the maximum amount of foam is fixed by regulation, the entire arms race shifts to what kind of foam, how it is laid up, and where the carbon goes inside the legal envelope. Innovation gets pushed into chemistry, geometry, and weight reduction — exactly the areas where Adidas is now filing. A men’s size 9 of the Pro Evo 3 weighs 97 grams, roughly 30 percent lighter than its predecessor. That weight reduction, achieved without sacrificing stack height, is itself patentable subject matter.
Trade Dress and Design Patents: The Look of Going Fast
Function is only half the story. The Pro Evo 3 is also visually distinctive — the silhouette of the midsole, the sweep of the outsole lugs, the placement of the three stripes, the colorway used at London. These visual elements are the domain of design patents and trade dress.
A design patent in the United States protects the ornamental appearance of a functional article for fifteen years. Trade dress, protected under the Lanham Act, protects the overall look and feel of a product when consumers have come to associate that look with a single source. If you can glance at a shoe from across the expo hall and instantly say “that’s an Adizero,” that recognition is exactly what trade dress law exists to protect.
Expect Adidas to pursue both. Design patents lock in protection at the moment of launch, before the shoe has built consumer recognition; trade dress takes over once the look becomes famous. Together they give Adidas a way to stop knockoffs that copy the appearance of the Pro Evo 3 without copying the patented technology inside.
Trademarks: The Words That Sell the Speed
Then there are the names. ADIDAS. ADIZERO. ADIOS. LIGHTSTRIKE. PRO EVO. Each is, or can be, a registered trademark. The three-stripe mark on the side of the shoe is one of the most recognized trademarks in the world.
Trademarks do not protect technology — they protect brand. But in the running market, brand is enormously valuable. A consumer who pays $500 for the Pro Evo 3 is paying partly for the science and partly for the story. Sawe’s 1:59:30 just made that story considerably easier to tell, and considerably more expensive to imitate.
Trade Secrets and Sponsorship Rights
Two final layers deserve mention. First, trade secrets. The exact LIGHTSTRIKE Pro Evo foam formulation — the polymer blend, the gas-loading process, the cure schedule — is almost certainly held as a trade secret rather than disclosed in a patent. Patents require public disclosure in exchange for a 20-year monopoly; trade secrets last forever, but only as long as they stay secret. Most shoe companies pursue both, patenting the structural innovations and locking the chemistry behind NDAs.
Second, the athletes themselves are walking IP. Sawe’s and Kejelcha’s name, image, and likeness rights — what U.S. lawyers call rights of publicity — are being licensed to Adidas through endorsement contracts. When a photo of Sawe crossing the line in the Pro Evo 3 ends up on an Adidas billboard, a separate set of contractual and statutory rights is being exercised in addition to the IP baked into the shoe.
Why It Matters
Records like 1:59:30 are not won by shoes alone. They are won by athletes with extraordinary genetics, extraordinary training, and an extraordinary appetite for pain. But they are enabled by a quiet legal infrastructure most fans never see — the patents, designs, marks, and contracts that let a company invest tens of millions of dollars in research and feel reasonably confident it can recoup that investment.
The next time you watch a world record fall, look past the finish line clock. Somewhere in the corporate filings, there is a patent application that helped get the runner there.
Rick Martin is the founder of Martin IP Law Group, where he counsels clients on patent, trademark, and trade-secret strategy for technology-driven products. Nothing in this article is legal advice. If you are evaluating IP protection for an athletic-products innovation, contact the firm directly.
