NICE FIT IN VICTORY UGG FEATURE STORY

In 2003, the McDougalls had appealed to the Australian Government's trademark regulator, IP Australia, claiming that UGGS - originally an abbreviation of ugly, so it is believed - was a generic term. This week they received the news that IP Australia agreed. The name is to be removed from the register of trademarks. Australian manufacturers can once again call their UGG BOOTS.
Bronwyn McDougall said she and her husband were thrilled. ''This is a moral victory for all Australians,'' she said.
There was elation, too, in Maitland, where the Mortel family has been producing ugg boots for nearly 50 years. Frank Mortel, now 73, set up a tiny sheepskin factory after emigrating from Holland in 1958, bringing with him a few sewing machines.
Descended from six generations of orthopaedic bootmakers, he made his first pair of fur-lined slippers for his wife, Rita, who had complained of cold feet. He then began to manufacture the slippers and boots commercially.
''We called them UGGS from the start,'' said Mortel, who believes that Deckers was ''trying to frighten people off''. His son, Tony, who runs the family's factory, turning out 16,000 pairs of ugg boots a year, agrees. ''People around the world know them as uggs,'' he said.
So how did a quintessentially Australian product end up being hijacked by a corporation based in Santa Barbara, California? To understand it, you have to go back 35 years.
In 1971, a local surf champion, Shane Steadman, decided to capitalise on the popularity of uggs among Australian and visiting US wave riders. He began selling the boots and registered the name. Then in 1979, Brian Smith, another Australian surfer with a sharp business eye, went to New York with a few pairs in his rucksack. He set up a company, Ugg Holdings, registered the Ugg trademark in 25 countries and sold out to Deckers in 1995. As far as the US company was concerned, it now owned the ugg boot, and in 1999 it sent out warning letters to Australian traders.