The term “dupe” can carry different meanings in different contexts, but it has increasingly become the label for a product that imitates the appearance, aesthetic, or functionality of a branded product without copying the brand itself. Dupes have occupied the attention of brand owners for years, but lululemon’s October 21, 2025, registration of LULULEMON DUPE may signal something more ambitious: a direct challenge to dupe culture itself. The registration raises a fundamental question: can brands claim exclusive rights in the language consumers use to identify lookalike products?
Three years ago, lululemon launched its two-day “Dupe Swap” event at Los Angeles’s Century City Mall on May 6-7, 2023, inviting consumers to trade in lookalike leggings for authentic Align leggings. Eighteen months later, on November 25, 2024, lululemon athletica canada inc., applied to register DUPE SWAP for a broad range of retail, advertising, marketing, and promotional services. That description appears difficult to reconcile with the limited, one-time legging exchange event that inspired the application. Instead, it encompasses advertising, marketing, and promotional activities that lululemon performed for itself in the ordinary course of business rather than services rendered for others.
Because the USPTO correctly viewed DUPE SWAP as descriptive of an event involving the exchange of dupes, the mark registered on the Supplemental Register rather than the Principal Register. Even so, the registration confers certain benefits, including the ability to use the ® symbol, assuming lululemon resumes use of the mark following the current three-and-one-half-year lapse in use.
Nine days after applying to register DUPE SWAP, on December 4, 2024, lululemon filed an application to register LULULEMON DUPE for essentially the same collection of retail, advertising, and promotional services. Unlike DUPE SWAP, this application matured into a Principal Register registration despite the absence of actual use in the United States. The registration was based on a Benelux registration that lululemon applied for only one day before filing the U.S. application, and which issued barely two months later, on February 12, 2025.
Obtaining a U.S. registration through Section 44(e) without actual U.S. use is entirely lawful. Nevertheless, the applicant must possess a bona fide intention to use the mark in U.S. commerce (15 U.S.C. § 1126(e), 37 C.F.R. § 2.34(a)(3)(i), and TMEP §§ 1004 and 1008). It is difficult to imagine any lululemon entity genuinely intending to use LULULEMON DUPE as a mark, much less actually doing so, raising questions regarding the nature and extent of the lululemon’s bona fide intent at the time of filing.
What, then, is lululemon’s battle plan for a registration of a mark it likely will never use? The most likely answer is that the registration will be used as a tool against sellers of dupes on Amazon, other online marketplaces, and perhaps even operators of websites devoted to identifying or selling dupe products. Whether those platforms will distinguish between trademark uses of LULULEMON DUPE and descriptive uses protected by the fair-use defense codified in 15 U.S.C. § 1115(b)(4) remains to be seen.
Other companies appear to be adopting a similar strategy. On March 11, 2025, Aritzia LP filed Application No. 99077257 for ARITZIA DUPE for bags, clothing, and retail store services. Williams-Sonoma entered the fray on April 20, 2026, applying to register POTTERY BARN DUPE for retail store and online retail store services featuring a wide variety of home furnishings and décor products. Like lululemon, Williams-Sonoma relied on a foreign registration obtained in remarkably short order.
Until it deploys its registration offensively, lululemon will likely continue relying on more traditional forms of intellectual-property protection. Indeed, in Lululemon Athletica Canada Inc. v. Costco Wholesale Corp., No. 2:25-cv-05864 (C.D. Cal. filed June 27, 2025), lululemon asserted design patent and trade dress rights. The case ultimately ended through a series of confidential settlements and stipulations, culminating in dismissal on August 11, 2026.
Where patents, copyrights, trademarks, or trade dress protect a product’s features, infringement claims properly exist against those who copy those protected elements. But where no intellectual-property right protects a product, copying should remain lawful. And if copying is lawful, competitors should ordinarily be free to describe what they have done, including by identifying their products as “dupes” of better-known alternatives. Allowing such descriptions may not only promote competition, but also reduce consumer confusion by accurately communicating the relationship consumers already perceive between the products.
