New Film Chronicles the Ugg Court Battles
When filmmaker Susan Lambert was growing up in the Blue Mountains of Australia, she wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing ugg boots. The iconic Australian footwear, as Aussie as Ayer’s Rock, was something people wore to stay warm, not to be fashionable. In her memorable words, you’ll be considered "a total dag" if you appeared in public wearing the clunky sheepskin creations.
My, how times change.
Fast-forward a few decades to 2003, and the ugg boot was in its heyday. Big-budget advertising and rising popularity among celebrities had pushed the ugg onto high fashion’s center stage, and dozens of companies were selling them online and in shops throughout the world. Companies like Ugg Australia were feverishly applying the ugg concept — i.e., soft, durable sheepskin lined with fleece — to everything they could: other types of footwear, hats, gloves, scarves, etc. Australian manufacturers were cheering the ugg boot’s popularity, and raking in the dough.
Then reality slapped the little guys in the face. It turned out that Deckers Corporation, the parent company of Ugg Australia, had quite legally acquired the trademark to the term "ugg" in 25 countries — including its homeland, Australia. And they were serious about protecting that trademark. They’d sent out warning letters telling other manufacturers not to use the term for their products as early as 1999, but never followed up on the threat. However, the year 2003 saw a second round of letters — and then Deckers started taking people to court when they didn’t take heed.
Unsurprisingly, the Australian manufacturers were outraged at the appropriation of what they justifiably considered a generic term, and formed an association to fight what they perceived as Deckers’ high-handedness. After more than two years’ struggle, they managed to have "ugg" and several related terms deregistered in Australia, winning back the right to call their boots what they’ve always called them. Deckers plans to appeal the ruling, pointing out that it was they who popularized the boots, while the other manufacturers rode to financial success on a coattail effect.
When she heard three years ago that the term "ugg" no longer belonged to Australia, Susan Lambert was intrigued enough to research the subject and begin preparing a documentary, which was ultimate produced in September 2006 as "The Good, The Bad and the Ugg Boot." The film chronicles the battle for the figurative custody of the word "ugg," casting it in a sort of David-and-Goliath mode in which Goliath is the American-owned Deckers Corporation — with, of course, the small manufacturers collectively cast as David. That’s not to say that the roles were necessarily invalid: while they had a legal right to the name "ugg" at the time, Deckers tended to play hardball in dealing with their competitors. Among other things, it had companies thrown off Ebay, and in at least one case convinced Icann (the organization that controls global Internet addresses) to deregister one competitor’s URL. It’s still having small players removed from Ebay whenever it can.
Lambert says her documentary is about more than just an odd looking boot: it’s about how globalization is affecting small businesses everywhere. While the film is strictly an Australian product, made using what Ms. Lambert calls a domestic budget, it’s been garnering significant attention since its recent airing on Australian TV. It’s even being used for educational purposes in Australia and elsewhere, to demonstrate to students the effects of marketplace globalization.
