Adidas Sues Over Stripes, Prompting All Parallel Geometry To Unionise
The sportswear giant's legal battle over a four-stripe design has accidentally caused fundamental mathematics to go on strike.
SYDNEY, Adidas is taking Australian fashion label White Fox to court, alleging that its four-striped clothes infringe the company’s trademark.
The case has produced a metaphysical labour dispute nobody had planned for. Sets of three parallel lines have unionised worldwide and are refusing to appear near each other until somebody grants them artistic freedom.
“The sportswear industry does not own us,” said three sentient lines hovering outside a stationery shop. They communicated through low, rhythmic vibrations. “We have spent too long standing in for trainers and tracksuits. Sometimes we want to be lines on paper. Sometimes modernist architecture. The four-stripe garments are our brethren, and we stand with them.”
“The number three may simply pack up and leave the numerical system entirely.”
The strike has put basic mathematics under strain. Triangles are declining to complete their third side, which has left primary school students staring at geometry homework with understandable suspicion. On roads, double yellow lines have invited a third line to join them. Parking regulations have therefore ceased to mean much to anyone.
This was already difficult enough.
A group of right angles calling itself the Orthogonal Brotherhood has carved a statement into a large wheel of cheddar. It says that, if trademark law keeps limiting how many lines people may draw, shapes will withdraw their “cooperative structural efforts” from office buildings built after next Tuesday.
Offices have responded badly. Accounting spreadsheets will no longer show columns in groups of three; the third column now becomes a picture of a small, angry badger. The entirely fictional Global Bureau of Abstract Concepts has entered talks, apparently because there was nobody else available.
Chief Geometry Negotiator Penelope Flute said the situation was becoming unstable. “If this litigation continues, the number three may pack up and leave the numerical system,” she said, while trying to settle an isosceles trapezoid vibrating on her desk. “Two and four are attempting to bridge the gap. But divide five by two and the fabric of the universe starts weeping structurally.”
The problem has since reached suburban kitchens and gardens. Simon Quaver said his three-pronged serving fork twisted itself into a solid lump of non-infringing metal while sitting in a drawer. Local clovers have begun shedding their third leaves with some force, leaving fields of two-leaf plants behind.
Until the new line union reaches a collective agreement with global trademark law, citizens should avoid drawing straight marks on flat surfaces. If you need to underline a word, use small squiggles. Or point at the paper very hard, which is now regarded as the responsible option.