Last Brand, Inc. v. Deckers Outdoor Corporation

Background

Last Brand, Inc., doing business as Quince, alleged that Deckers Outdoor Corporation, which owns the UGG brand, used hundreds of sham lawsuits asserting unprotectable, unregistered product-design trade dress to block competitors and maintain its position in the U.S. market for sheepskin- and shearling-lined casual footwear. Quince asserted one claim: attempted monopolization under Section 2 of the Sherman Act.

The complaint described Deckers’s enforcement efforts involving various UGG footwear designs, including the Bailey Button design. It also emphasized an October 2, 2025 order in an earlier related proceeding involving Quince, in which the court granted Quince summary judgment on its defenses that the asserted Tasman and Classic Ultra Mini trade dresses were generic and unprotectable. Quince alleged that Deckers later filed additional actions asserting the same five-feature Tasman definition.

Judicial Notice

The court granted both parties’ requests for judicial notice. It took notice of the existence and contents of specified court records and Trademark Status & Document Retrieval database excerpts, but not the truth of factual assertions contained in those materials. The court also ordered that future filings identify documents for which judicial notice had already been taken and not submit new requests for those same documents.

Motion to Strike or File a Sur-Reply

Quince moved to strike arguments in Deckers’s reply brief or, alternatively, to file a later reply. Quince argued that Deckers had improperly addressed in its reply the legal standard for a series of allegedly sham lawsuits. The court denied the motion. It found that the reply responded to issues raised in Quince’s opposition and that Quince was not prejudiced because it could address the issues in connection with an amended complaint.

Noerr-Pennington and Sham Litigation

The Noerr-Pennington doctrine generally protects efforts to petition the government, including lawsuits, from statutory liability. The protection does not extend to sham litigation. The court described three possible sham-litigation situations recognized by the Ninth Circuit, including: (1) a lawsuit that is objectively baseless and brought for an unlawful purpose; (2) a series of lawsuits brought under a policy of starting proceedings without regard to their merits and for an unlawful purpose; and (3) litigation undermined by intentional misrepresentations to the court. The third situation was not at issue here.

Quince’s complaint used the terms “objective baselessness” and “subjective intent,” which correspond to the first framework, known as the PREI framework. In its opposition, however, Quince argued primarily that the complaint pleaded the second framework, known as the POSCO series-of-lawsuits framework. The court found that the complaint did not clearly state which framework Quince intended to use.

Under POSCO, the question is whether the relevant proceedings were part of a pattern of successive filings brought without regard to their merits and essentially to harass or injure a market rival. The court found that the complaint did not clearly identify the relevant series. Among other things, it was unclear whether the series included early patent-only lawsuits, trade-dress lawsuits filed before the October 2, 2025 order, lawsuits filed afterward, cases involving other products, the earlier related proceeding involving Quince, or separate pleadings within lawsuits rather than entire lawsuits. The complaint’s general descriptions also did not clearly explain which proceedings Quince claimed were brought without regard to their merits and for an unlawful purpose.

The court declined to decide whether the complaint adequately pleaded the POSCO exception because the complaint did not clearly assert that theory and the parties’ briefing addressed different versions of the claim. The court also declined to analyze the PREI framework further because Quince had not adequately identified which lawsuits or other filings it claimed were objectively baseless.

Antitrust Injury, Standing, and Attempted Monopolization

Deckers separately argued that Quince had not pleaded antitrust injury or standing. The court explained that Quince’s theory depended on Deckers’s allegedly sham litigation, but the complaint did not adequately identify which lawsuits were supposedly sham. The court therefore did not rule on whether Quince had adequately pleaded antitrust injury or standing.

Deckers also argued that Quince had not adequately pleaded attempted monopolization because it had not alleged anticompetitive conduct, had defined the market too narrowly to show a dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power, and had not alleged specific intent to monopolize. The court likewise did not rule on those arguments because they overlapped with the unresolved issues concerning the alleged sham litigation.

Disposition

The court held that the complaint, as presently drafted, did not allege enough facts to show an exception to Noerr-Pennington immunity under either the PREI or POSCO framework. Because the court could not determine that amendment would be futile, it granted Deckers’s motion to dismiss and dismissed the complaint with leave to amend. The court stated that Quince’s amended complaint was due September 17, 2026.