> When Deckers, the company behind fleece-lined UGG boots, recently took Quince to court over its lookalike boots, it tried to bar Quince from referencing “dupe culture” at trial.
> The bid failed, confirming that “dupes” and “dupe culture” — a commercial ecosystem built around providing consumers cheaper alternatives to name-brand products — are cultural phenomena here to stay.
> The trial focused on whether Quince’s shearling boots that really, really look like UGGs violated the existing patent for the design. And in a twist, the jury ruled that yes, Quince had copied the UGG design — but the patent over the UGG boot should not have been issued in the first place because the design was too generic to protect. The ruling opened the door for Quince and any other brand to make a similar-looking boot, opening up a new frontier for “dupe culture.”
UGG itself is a company that operates by abusing intellectual property laws.
Seems wild to me they would be still suing to protect that patent in 2026 (or 'recently') – cheap Primark clones seemed to be the standard footwear of (female) teens & pre-teens in the 00s. (And they absolutely called them 'UGGs'.) That ship has long since sailed.
> a commercial ecosystem built around providing consumers cheaper alternatives to name-brand products
This is expected IMHO, given that name brand product do nothing more than raise and raise prices, with varying list of ~excuses~ reasons such as "war here or there", "material/labor costs", "crisis", etc... But consumers' salaries are the same than before price raises of the last 7~10 years, so the new prices are unjustified (no better quality, no better products) and so people will keep expecting that a boot (or anything else) costs today the same as it cost in 2019.
Businesses don't just price gouge. They often expand their product lines or have R&D to come up with new products and that's more costly than just making the same shoe with the same materials for 40 years. Many consumers feel like "Why do they need to grow? Why can't they just make the product I like and I'll pay for it?" But the reality is that not growing is not protecting yourself from the future. For every product Quince dupes (and they have every right to do them and congrats on their successful business model), there is a brand with a signature product people stopped caring about, and if they hadn't spent the money to expand and try selling new products they may not have survived.
But yeah, when Deckers bought the Ugg brand name the quality went down. Similar to Dunlop Volleys which are now crappy quality too. I don't buy either now.
Might as well get any other brands version of the same thing - the quality is unlikely to be any worse. Hell, my kid opted for fluffy crocs instead even though they are yet to truly know the word bogan...
I'm not a fashion guru. I'd argue there isn't any good Australian brand.
Maybe R.M.Williams boots if your wallet is tolerant to something way overpriced.
But they seem to be targeting the exec crowd who want dress-boots-with-aussie-country-cred while this exact marketing ploy is causing the loss of that credibility.
Again with the brand abuse. But the brand wants to exude quality, even if it is way over priced for what you get, so that's something.
To clarify, Uggs originated in Australia and are a generic term here.
Deckers owns a trademark outside Australia and is enforcing it against people in Australia.
It would be like if a US company registered Champagne as a trademark then enforced it against French companies selling it.
I see. Similar to Balsamico di Modena / generic balsamic vinegar?
Does non-PDO Parmesan exist in Italy? In the US, "Parmesan" is usually some kind of domestic hard cheese that lacks maturity. The genuine Parmigiano Reggiano costs around 3x.
Champagne is absolutely not a "generic" product in the US.
While some California wines were and still are sold as "California Champagne", there was a court decision back in 2006 which affirmed the same protected trademark for Champagne as in the rest of the world, with the caveat that wineries already using the "Champagne" name would be grandfathered in and permitted to continue doing so.
A bottle of Champagne made in the US will be labeled with its origin, and no one can start a winery and start selling Champagne in the US. That's not the same thing as "generic".
I guess it's "generic" in the sense that everyone calls a sparkling wine "champagne", same as everyone calls a copier a "Xerox machine", but if some other company would try to sell their copier using the Xerox name, they would still be sued by Xerox (the company)?
There is a kinder variant for such - prosecco, which can actually mean OK quality (within sparkling stuff bounds, which are not high).
But yeah calling anything Champagne apart from stuff coming from Champagne is a bad form and looked down upon a bit. Small kids do such mistakes and thats fine, adults shouldn't.
> The bid failed, confirming that “dupes” and “dupe culture” — a commercial ecosystem built around providing consumers cheaper alternatives to name-brand products — are cultural phenomena here to stay.
> The trial focused on whether Quince’s shearling boots that really, really look like UGGs violated the existing patent for the design. And in a twist, the jury ruled that yes, Quince had copied the UGG design — but the patent over the UGG boot should not have been issued in the first place because the design was too generic to protect. The ruling opened the door for Quince and any other brand to make a similar-looking boot, opening up a new frontier for “dupe culture.”
UGG itself is a company that operates by abusing intellectual property laws.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ugg_boots_trademark_dispute