New Balance is the Latest Sneaker Brand to Enter Metaverse

New Balance appear to be the latest footwear company to make moves towards the metaverse, as they’ve just made some trademark applications to protect their intellectual property in the digital space.

Trademark attorney Josh Gerben – who had also discovered a similar application from Nike in late 2021 – pulled up some documentation supplied by NB to the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on January 13 this year. The brand filed three applications to sell New Balance-branded products in virtual form, covering downloadable goods and services.

Like Nike’s intentions, this could mean digital ‘skins’ for gaming applications, or wardrobe assistants rendered in augmented reality for NB customers. Beyond that, this brand protection could also allow authenticity verification and ownership credentials to be securely stored in non-physical form.

Alternatively, like what many other apparel and footwear companies are doing at the moment, there could be New Balance NFTs (NBTs?) in the near future.

To quickly recap recent sneaker metaverse news, Prada and adidas have just put a call out for a user-generated NFT project to go with their new collaboration, Nike acquired RTFKT Studios in December, and also created ‘NIKELAND’ not long before that. What this means for the sneaker industry as a whole remains to be seen.