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In 2004, a group of small manufacturers in Australia formed the ugg Boot Footwear Assn. to combat Deckers’ claim that it owns all the rights to the name “ugg.” The association argued that the term was originally an abbreviation of the word “ugly,” and, therefore, generic. According to the Dominion Post in Wellington, New Zealand, the Australian regulator of trademarks agreed with the association in 2006, and local manufacturers were once again allowed to call their sheepskin boots “uggs.” Deckers Outdoor Corp. still owns the trademark in the U.S. and Europe.

And then there’s the 2006 documentary “The Good, the Bad and the Ugg Boot,” a 54-minute film that details the battle between Deckers and, among other clans, the McDougalls, who have been making “Uggs” for nearly 30 years. An Australian government website described the film as “a story about cultural identity and survival in the age of globalisation. It’s a spaghetti western narrated by Greig Pickhaver following the funny, tragic and heroic efforts of a couple of feisty small family businesses, in Australia and America, as they take on the giant US company, Deckers Outdoor Corporation, over a weird Aussie cultural icon — the Ugg boot.”

But the criticism does not seem to have had much effect on the juggernaut that is ugg Australia.