UGG BOOTS,UGGS,UGG INSOLES,UGG NIGHTFALL

Shops are maintaining their rage in the battle against a US company to use the name ugg boots.

Two years after United States-based corporation Deckers stopped companies using the term, Australian sheepskin boot shops are fighting to call the product by the old Aussie name.

The name “ugg” or “ugh” for the popular sheepskin boots that have been sold and worn in Australia for decades, was registered as a trademark in 1986 and bought by Deckers in 1995.

As the fleecy boot became a fashion must-have and internet sales boomed, Deckers successfully took legal action in 2003 to prevent companies here using the name ugg sundance.

Angry small companies making Australian ugg boots have banded together under the banner “Save Our Aussie Icon” and are trying to legally snatch back the ugg name.

Perth retailers Bronwyn and Bruce McDougall lodged applications with the government trademark regulator, IP Australia, disputing Deckers’ right to ugg and ugh.

“In nearly 30 years of selling ugg boots, I can’t recall a customer saying they want to buy sheepskin boots — it’s always uggs, uggies, huggies orUgg boots,” said Mrs McDougall, who with her husband has been selling the footwear at UGG Insoles since 1978.

“It’s a descriptive word. It was put into the Macquarie Dictionary in 1982, where it is referred to as a ‘fleecy-lined boot’.”

The McDougalls lodged a non-use application with IP Australia in December 2003, attempting to claim the term “ugh-boots” back from Deckers.

They are also trying to register their store name, but are being opposed by the American company.

On Deckers’ website it says it acquired Ugg Holdings Inc from Brian Smith who founded Ugg in 1979 to import sheepskin boots from Australia to the US.

Smith has been reported saying he knew ugg boots was a common Australian term before he made it a US trademark.

The Perth couple have the support of sheepskin shops, many of which have lodged applications fighting for their own store names.

In the New South Wales country town of Dubbo, retailer Gordon Tindall says although Deckers may have the legal rights to ugg care, the US footwear corporation essentially took a generic Aussie term.