# Nothing Is Lost, Nothing Is Created, Everything Is Copied

*A California jury found that Quince had copied UGG, then ruled in Quince’s favour. The case offers a useful yardstick for measuring what a design or idea is really worth.*

- Published: 2026-10-30
- Section: Insights
- URL: https://brazilstockguide.com/insights/nothing-is-lost-nothing-is-created-everything-is-copied/

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**By Rodrigo Uchoa, special for Brazil Stock Guide**

Oakland, California, is hardly the first place that springs to mind when one thinks of fashion. Yet it was in a federal courtroom there that a jury spent four days in June debating dashed lines, stitching patterns and the shape of the ankle on a sheepskin boot.

On one side stood Deckers, owner of UGG and the Ultra Mini, the low-cut boot that has become a winter uniform for much of the world. On the other was Quince, the online retailer that promises “luxury for less” and is not especially coy about where it finds its inspiration.

Deckers’ lawyer, Jed Hansen, showed jurors an internal document in which Quince had sent its manufacturer a link to the UGG boot as a reference. His argument was straightforward: Quince wanted a share of the market, but without paying for research, development or licensing. Quince’s counsel, Xinlin Morrow, countered with a different analogy. Imagine, she said, a brick wall. If someone could patent the appearance of a brick, no one else would be able to build equally sturdy walls.

The jury deliberated for just over two hours. The verdict would not have looked out of place in a Monty Python sketch: Quince’s boot infringed UGG’s patent, yet the patent itself was invalid. One juror later told *Bloomberg* that the registered drawings contained too little detail and depicted mostly functional elements, such as the stitching. Months earlier, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín had already concluded that the boot’s appearance was too generic to qualify for trademark protection. Quince emerged victorious and even sought US$1.8 million in legal fees from Deckers.

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Australians may feel entitled to a wry smile. In Australia, “ugg” has long been the generic name for the sheepskin boot popularised by surfers in the 1960s. It travelled the world under the tongue-in-cheek label of “uggly boots”, occupying the same category of “so ugly it’s cool” that consumers later assigned to Crocs. Deckers spent years in American courts defending its claim to the name and, in 2019, a Chicago jury found that a small Sydney manufacturer had infringed the trademark. The company kept the name, but the design itself has effectively returned to the public domain.

Quince’s defence rested on an argument that can sound faintly cynical: the rise of dupe culture. A “dupe”, short for “duplicate”, is a cheaper product that deliberately imitates a pricier original without pretending to be counterfeit. Influencers have turned dupe culture into a badge of consumer savvy rather than a form of aspirational deception. The fashion industry publication *The Fashion Law* neatly captured the dilemma this trend creates: when a market becomes flooded with copies of a product, does that prove the design is distinctive, or that it has become everyone’s?

To be copied relentlessly is the highest compliment a designer can receive. It may also be the most expensive.

For investors, the issue is rather more practical. According to Ocean Tomo, intangible assets account for roughly 92% of the market value of S&P 500 companies, compared with just 17% in 1975. Much of that value lies in brands, patents and designs, assets that often never appear on the balance sheet when they are created internally. Markets nevertheless assign them enormous value, on the assumption that they are exclusive.

Courts have increasingly found themselves testing that assumption in a series of high-profile disputes. Earlier this year, for example, the American furniture manufacturer Emeco sued Zara Home in Hamburg, alleging that the Spanish retailer had copied chairs designed by Norman Foster for Emeco in 2006.

Gregg Buchbinder, Emeco’s president, argues that large retail chains wait until a design has proven successful before reproducing it, thereby avoiding both the development costs and the effort required to create demand. There is an irony here: the chair in question, known as the 20-06, was itself a reinterpretation of a chair Emeco originally designed for the US Navy in 1944.

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****The fine line between inspiration and imitation extends to furniture: Emeco accuses Zara Home of copying a chair designed by Norman Foster.****

Consumers, meanwhile, appear perfectly comfortable embracing both innovation and imitation. In March, Quince raised US$500 million in a funding round led by Iconiq and is now valued at US$10.1 billion. UGG, for its part, generated US$2.74 billion in sales in the financial year ending in March, an increase of 8.2%. Original and copy have thrived side by side.

Another route has been to market the product as an “homage”. German watchmaker Steinhart sells, for around US$500, watches that almost anyone would recognise at a glance as being inspired by the Rolex Submariner. The most basic Submariner now costs at least US$10,000. Yet the Steinhart dial clearly reads “Steinhart”. No customer leaves the shop believing they have bought a Rolex, and the company insists that its Ocean One is a tribute rather than an imitation.

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****Rolex Submariner and Steinhart Ocean One: the resemblance is striking, but the differences lie in the name on the dial, the prestige, and, above all, the price.****

This is often where the law draws the line: counterfeiting begins when one product pretends to be another.

In Brazil, the overall visual identity of a product, known as trade dress, cannot be registered in its own right. Protection derives instead from unfair competition law, and infringement typically depends on whether the imitation is likely to deceive or confuse consumers. Between homage and counterfeit lies a remarkably broad grey area.

Consumers, meanwhile, continue to buy symbols. Rolex wants to be recognised by everyone. Steinhart wants to be recognised only by those in the know. The dupe wears its lower price as a mark of pride, because thrift itself has become a status signal. Anyone who has worn UGG boots through a São Paulo winter of 18°C knows that thermal comfort was never really the point. Deckers can take some solace from that. Few objects are as culturally powerful as the ones everybody wants to copy.

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Source: Brazil Stock Guide, https://brazilstockguide.com/insights/nothing-is-lost-nothing-is-created-everything-is-copied/