In a lawsuit filed on March 12, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon, adidas claims that Sole Retriever weaponized stolen trade secrets and unreleased product imagery to demand preferential treatment from the sportswear giant.
In an email revealed in the filing, Sole Retrievers’ founder, Harris Monoson, reached out to adidas and Pitch Blend (the PR firm that assists adidas Originals with product launches), demanding to be “treated with the respect they have earned.”
Also in that email, Monoson shared that Sole Retriever had obtained full details on the upcoming AE2 lineup and that they would see no reason to “hold back on posting these things” if they did not receive the treatment they felt entitled to.
According to the lawsuit, Sole Retriever swiftly followed through with their threat by not only revealing “speculative mock-ups” of AE2 colorways, but also revealing a look at the AE3. According to adidas, the AE3 was still in the design process as of January 2026- when Sole Retriever shared a look at the sneaker on social media.
Naturally, the lawsuit has made the rounds across social media. Earlier this afternoon, Sole Retriever took to both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram to share the following message:
All information in this story can be found in the filing found here.
