High Court Judge Frank Seep­er­sad is ad­vis­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives of in­ter­na­tion­al brands Nike and Puma to do­nate con­fis­cat­ed knock­offs of their prod­ucts, with the lo­gos re­moved, in­stead of de­stroy­ing them.

Seep­er­sad made the sug­ges­tion as he an­nounced the cost of de­stroy­ing the goods last Wednes­day.

Pe­nal cloth­ing re­tail­er DB Fun­styles Cloth­ing Lim­it­ed agreed to have its ship­ment of more than 8,000 im­i­ta­tion slip­pers de­stroyed af­ter it con­ced­ed a trade­mark in­fringe­ment law­suit brought by in­ter­na­tion­al sports­wear man­u­fac­tur­ers Nike In­no­vate CV and Puma SE.

Seep­er­sad or­dered that the slip­pers be hand­ed over to rep­re­sen­ta­tives of Nike and Puma with­in 14 days of the or­der. He was in­formed that the cost of de­stroy­ing the slip­pers, which were im­port­ed at a val­ue of US $50,000, amount­ed to $15,409.92.

The cost of de­struc­tion was es­ti­mat­ed at $7,725, while Cus­toms and Ex­cise charged $6,284.92 to be present. The com­pa­nies’ rep­re­sen­ta­tives were al­so re­quired to be present, in­cur­ring an ad­di­tion­al cost of $1,400, which DB Fun­styles must pay.

The com­pa­ny was al­so or­dered to pay le­gal fees, which are to be as­sessed on Oc­to­ber 15.

Af­ter learn­ing of the costs, Seep­er­sad sug­gest­ed an al­ter­na­tive and in­clud­ed in his or­der that, if the slip­pers could be al­tered to re­move the brand mark­ings and do­nat­ed, then that should be done.

“Has any thought been giv­en when the items are de­liv­ered to the claimant, in­stead of com­plete de­struc­tion, for the re­moval of the in­fring­ing trade­mark or iden­ti­fy­ing mark that as­so­ciates the prod­uct with the claimant, one that may be cheap­er? And sec­ond­ly, if the trade­mark is re­moved, then you have shoes which could prob­a­bly be dis­trib­uted to a char­i­ty, and, you know, there are many poor peo­ple in this coun­try; there are chil­dren who have start­ed school and may be in need of school shoes.”

In re­sponse, at­tor­ney Miguel Vasquez, who along with Fan­ta Punch rep­re­sent­ed the com­pa­nies, said the is­sue may in­volve more than brand­ing but al­so health con­cerns.

He said the ma­te­r­i­al used to cre­ate the prod­ucts, which cost “less than US $1 to make,” may be harm­ful.

Vasquez added, “We have con­sid­ered that (do­nat­ing the slip­pers), cer­tain­ly, and for the pur­pos­es both of this mat­ter, but as a gen­er­al con­cept of pol­i­cy when it comes to de­struc­tion of goods. The dif­fi­cul­ty we have is twofold; the first be­ing a prac­ti­cal dif­fi­cul­ty in terms of find­ing the prop­er re­sources to have those marks re­moved, and the sec­ond dif­fi­cul­ty is en­sur­ing that those goods dis­trib­uted are not sub­ject to sub­se­quent un­law­ful ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Seep­er­sad ac­knowl­edged that the prod­ucts could find their way back on the mar­ket and ques­tioned whether the re­moval of the brand mark­ings would make them un­de­sir­able for re­sale.

He in­vit­ed both par­ties to con­sid­er the al­ter­na­tive, point­ing out to DB Fun­styles’ at­tor­ney, Ra­jiv Sochan, that re­mov­ing the trade­marks may in­cur ad­di­tion­al costs.

Seep­er­sad said, “Just from a so­cial con­science point of view, if there was a way of oblit­er­at­ing the marks, it may cost the de­fen­dant a lit­tle more mon­ey, and every­one is sat­is­fied that the items will not pose a threat or harm to peo­ple hav­ing re­gard to the chem­i­cals and ma­te­ri­als which were used, then it may well be that that's a course of ac­tion that is worth con­sid­er­ing.”

Sochan said that since con­ced­ing the items were coun­ter­feit last month, sev­er­al char­i­ties had reached out to his client ask­ing for the items to be do­nat­ed rather than de­stroyed.

Vasquez al­so point­ed out that the stat­ed cost could in­crease if the de­struc­tion took longer than a day, and giv­en the num­ber of goods, it may be slight­ly high­er than quot­ed.

The case was ini­ti­at­ed af­ter DB Fun­styles im­port­ed the ship­ment in Jan­u­ary 2023.

The sports­wear com­pa­nies ap­plied to have the ship­ment seized pend­ing the out­come of their case af­ter they were alert­ed by Cus­toms and Ex­cise Di­vi­sion of­fi­cials that the mer­chan­dise, which con­sist­ed of 7,012 Nike, 288 Air Jor­dan, and 660 Puma slip­pers, was coun­ter­feit.