Trademark Disputes
The UGG trademark has been, and continues to be, the subject of dispute in several countries. The trademark for ugh, ugg and ug boots has been removed from the trademark registry in Australia for non-use. Outside Australia and New Zealand, UGG (written in capital letters) is a registered trademark of Deckers Outdoor Corporation.
In 1999, Deckers registered the trademarks for "UGG" in the US. Deckers began asserting its new trademark and sent out cease and desist letters to Australian manufacturers. By the early 2000s, demand for ugg boots was soaring with Australian and USA based manufacturers selling uggs over the Internet. Deckers' law firm Middletons of Melbourne began a serious effort to halt the Australian companies' sales by sending cease and desist letters to a number of Australian and USA based manufacturers, preventing them from selling uggs on eBay or from using the word in their registered business names or domain names.
Brian Iversen of Blue Mountain Ugg Boots stated that his company has been manufacturing uggs since 1933, and that his company had long ago dismissed trademarking the name as it was generic. He further stated: "What the Americans are doing is like Ford suddenly announcing that they are the only people allowed to use the word 'car'. It's just bloody rude, mate." New South Wales Labor MPs wore ugg boots in Parliament House in support of the local industry while Western Australian MP Sharryn Jackson helped to establish a successful fighting fund to challenge Deckers trademarks. Jackson stated: "It defies belief that an Australian icon would be trademarked in the US."
The manufacture of ugg boots in Australia was primarily a Cottage industry. Individually lacking the resources to fight Deckers, 20 Australian manufacturers formed the Australian Sheepskin Association to fight the corporation's claim, arguing that "ugg" is a generic term referring to flat-heeled, pull-on sheepskin boots. One of these manufacturers, Perth's Uggs-N-Rugs, who had been manufacturing uggs since 1978 and selling them online since 1996, appealed to Australian trademark regulators on behalf of the Australian Sheepskin Association. The officer who heard the case stated that the "evidence overwhelmingly supports the proposition that the terms (ugg, ugh and ug boots) are interchangeably used to describe a specific style of sheepskin boot and are the first and most natural way in which to describe these goods." In 2006 Uggs-N-Rugs won the right to use the term UGG BOOT/S and variations such as UGH BOOT/S. Deckers retained the rights to their UGG logo as trade mark protection only applies for the way the mark appears in its entirety and not for the words it contains. IP Australia also ruled that the trademark "UGH-boots" (with hyphen) should be removed from the trademark register for non-use as Deckers had only been using the UGG logo, not the UGH marks. Deckers have since registered the domain name uggsnrugs.com. As of 2010, Deckers have declined to pay the Australian Sheepskin Associations costs as required by the ruling.
The 2006 ruling that "ugg" is a generic name only applies in Australia and Deckers still owns the trademarks in other jurisdictions such as the US, China, Japan and the European Union where they have successfully defended challenges to their mark.
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