It's a matter of degrees and legalities. White shoes can be claimed to be any white shoes. If they looked only like nikes brand shoes then the possibility would be there for a suit.
With the Walkman, at the times this figure is from (not like now, but the time it represents) if the Walkman looked exactly like the Sony version it could have only been the Sony version. Is there a big chance they would sue, nope. Though it's there. The bigger issue is working relationship and trust and future negotiations. As hot toys needs to get licenses thru/from Sony, for movies like Spiderman and so on, where as HT really has no professional relationship with nike. It's as much about not pissing off a person that you will have to work with in the future.
