Following its trade dress win against Deckers Outdoor Corp. last year, Last Brand Inc. is now going after Deckers on an antitrust allegation.
Last Brand, which does business under the Quince brand, is a direct-to-consumer fashion retailer known for selling dupes of designer looks at lower prices. Quince promises that its dupes are of similar or comparable quality.
At issue in Deckers’ trade dress lawsuit filed in 2023 were three Ugg shoes, where it alleged that certain Quince footwear infringed on Ugg’s trade dress. The court narrowed which features in a product are allowed trade dress protection, at least for elements that are widely-used in the marketplace.
Using the learnings from that case, Quince is now alleging in a new lawsuit filed in California in February that Deckers is trying to prevent lawful competition through “template” lawsuits. Quince goes further to accuse Deckers of operating a “litigation assembly line” by churning out template complaints asserting exclusive rights over basic and unprotectable product features. Those features include suede exteriors, shearling linings, rounded toes and thick soles.
“It reuses identical feature lists in lawsuits against dozens of competitors, changing only the defendant’s name and product,” the complaint said, noting also that certain paragraphs appear “without material variation in complaints filed years apart,” against different defendants and involving different footwear designs.
Quince said the scheme was “exposed” last October in the Deckers suit against Quince after full discovery to evaluate Decker’s product-design trade dress claims. And its said that by asserting unprotectable, unregistered product design trade dresses at scale, “Deckers seeks to over-extend the protection of trade dress. it seeks to control the entire category of goods in the Sheepskin Casual Footwear Market.”
The court document also accused Deckers of filing the template lawsuits during critical sales periods to disrupt their competitors. Quince also said that many of those lawsuits are settled, which then serve as the basis for leverage in the next round of lawsuits against competitors. It also noted that Deckers has sizable market power as a $2.5 billion company, and that it occupies about 50 percent of more in market share in the sheepskin casual footwear market.
Quince is seeking the compensatory and punitive damages, as well as a preliminary and permanent injunction, among other claims for relief.
Deckers did not respond to a query for comment by press time.