UG/Ugh/UGG

Slogan & Trademark Dispute

In Australia, and many other countries as well, Ugg boots also ug or uggs are a style of footwear that has been used generically for well over a hundred years. In 1984, an Aussie formed an USA based company andwas able to trademark this generic term. When asked by the USA federal trademark office's examiner, Susan Heller, on March the 7th 1986 "What is the significance of the term ugg?" She was told under oath that "There is no significance of the term UGG in the relevant trade or industry." This is despite the fact that many years before ugg, uggs, and ugh were all generic terms for sheepskin boots and were very much a part of popular Australian culture, and was in fact already referenced in Aussie dictionaries.

Generic terms may be snuck into the federal trademark office, but the law is quite clear that generic terms can't not be protected in any legal court anywhere in the world. Despite this, Deckers Outdoor Corporation and their subsidiary, UGG Holdings Inc. have been threatening legal action against companies that continue to use theses ugg generic words to describe the Australian icon, ugg boots.

Lots of livelihoods have been threatened by Decker's company which could only be described as yet another example of a giant corporation intent on monopolizing an industry that was never theirs to own in the first place. The difference here is that UGG was questionably allowed to go through the trademark process. Although this does not mean the trademark cannot be challenged and ultimately overturned.

In a recent article in "The Sunday Telegraph", it was reported that Westhaven Industries, a non-profit organization, which employs 65 intellectually disabled people to make ugg boots at its factory in Dubbo, Australia, have also been threatened with legal action.

"We have been selling sheepskin products for 30 years, long before ugg boots became popular in America and the UK, to have to give up the name is just not fair," Mr. Sullivan, production manager, said.

"It's like registering the name shoes – it's a generic term that everyone uses."

The recent threats and legal harassment from UGG Holdings Inc. and its parent company Deckers Outdoor Corporation has outraged not only the dozens of manufactures, some who have been making ugg boots since 1933, but the Australian public also, many who are now boycotting all of Deckers' other lines including Simple, Teva, and of course UGG Australia which are now made in China.

UGG is Australian! Read all about the trademark fight and how Aussies are responding to the trade marking of this generic term.

Australian Prime Minister :
Trade : Ugh boots
Just-style.com :
Australia: Deckers Threatens To Sue Over 'UGG' Copyright
Today Tonight :
End of the Aussie ugg?
Michael Organ, Australian Greens member for the Wollongong-based seat of Cunningham in the House of Representatives :
FREE TRADE? HUMBUG!
BBC News U.K. edition :
"After international trade disputes about everything from plastic bags to shiitake mushrooms, could woolly boots be next?" BBC News U.K. edition