Shoes with accompanying shoe technology can be granted patent rights if they meet the criteria for award of a patent.
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The first shoes known to man date back to around 7000 BCE. They were simple shoes made of bark. Since then, the shoe technology and industry has grown so much that as at last year, the global shoe industry was worth $400 billion.
According to the European Union Intellectual Property Office website, footwear was the third most counterfeited product in the European Union. The statistics though surprising, only demonstrate that the shoe industry contributes significantly to global trade.
