Getting Ahead of Dupes
Why Brand Owners Need More than Trademarks to Stop Dupes
Brand owners need more than trademark protection to stay ahead of fast-moving dupe producers who flit between platforms and constantly tailor their offerings to steer clear of infringement. Ralph Cunningham learns how a comprehensive IP rights strategy can help.
“Dupe” culture poses a different set of challenges for brand owners than the battle against counterfeiting.
While counterfeiters make identical copies using a brand’s logo and other intellectual property (IP), producers of dupes—or lookalikes—seek to imitate how premium goods look and work without using logos, complicating enforcement because their conduct may fall outside traditional trademark infringement.
Kristina Montanaro Schrader, Anti‑Counterfeiting Team Leader at Adams & Reese (USA), will moderate the session Enforcement Strategy Today: Designs, Dupes & the Tools That Work on Wednesday, November 18, 3:45 pm to 4:45 pm. The session will discuss different enforcement approaches against copycats; how brand owners can use design rights, trade dress, and other tools to tackle the problem; and how rights owners can make their brands more resilient.
She will be joined by Christine Casaceli, IP Compliance Lead Counsel, Temu (USA), Boriana Guimberteau, Partner at Stephenson Harwood AARPI (France), and Kristi McIntyre, Executive Director, Patent Counsel and Head of Litigation, Bausch + Lomb (USA).
When producers of lookalikes go up to the line separating them from IP infringement but no further, it’s an everyday challenge for brand owners to protect, monitor, and enforce their rights against them.
To compound matters, the popularity of dupes is growing. Dupe buying appears to be moving from the periphery into the mainstream. Global market research firm Circana published research earlier this year showing that 58 percent of shoppers in the US had purchased a dupe.
The research also revealed that price is no longer the whole story. Quality, convenience, and social media are reshaping how consumers shop across apparel, footwear, and beauty, turning dupes from a budget compromise into a deliberate choice that brands can no longer afford to ignore.
"Combating dupes demands coordination across trade dress, copyright, false advertising, regulatory referrals, and criminal enforcement."
- Kristina Montanaro Schrader | Adams & Reese (USA)
All the Rights
As dupes avoid direct trademark use, IP owners use a range of brand protection strategies to fight dupe culture. Ms. Schrader refers to acting early with brand enforcement that takes in a range of IP rights, not just trademarks.
“What I see working is a layered IP strategy built before the dupes hit the market. That means registering trade dress and copyrights for product packaging and promotional materials early, not reactively, so you have the strongest possible foundation when enforcement becomes necessary,” she says.
To ensure the greatest chance of success, brand owners should look to implement a coordinated strategy involving trade dress infringement, copyright infringement, counterfeiting claims, and, where appropriate, regulatory violations, Ms. Schrader adds.
As Executive Director, Patent Counsel and Head of Litigation at Bausch + Lomb, Ms. McIntyre believes brand owners should include patent rights enforcement in their brand protection planning.
“In addition to copyright and trademark rights, it’s important to review patent rights, if there are any. You are out of the world of ‘likelihood of confusion,’ and often have a more straightforward fight,” she says.
Unfair competition is another strategy that brand owners should consider, according to Ms. Guimberteau, especially where initiating an infringement action would not be straightforward, making another course of action necessary.
“In France, we have seen a number of highly effective actions grounded in unfair competition and in what French law recognizes as parasitisme (parasitic behavior), yielding strong results for rights holders. In particular, unfair competition-based actions can be quite efficient against free riding on the brand’s reputation,” she says.
"In particular, unfair competition-based actions can be quite efficient against free riding on the brand’s reputation."
- Boriana Guimberteau | Stephenson Harwood (France)
Online Enforcement
As with counterfeiters, lookalike producers are also proving particularly agile in moving between social media platforms and online marketplaces as monitoring and enforcement mechanisms catch up with them.
“The scale of online infringement has made automated monitoring indispensable. AI-driven brand protection tools now continuously scan marketplaces and social media for unauthorized use of product images and trade dress, using image recognition to detect counterfeits even where sellers alter photographs or descriptions to evade keyword-based filters,” says Ms. Guimberteau.
Online marketplace Temu has a proactive enforcement strategy in place. Ms. Casaceli describes a system where every listing is screened before it goes live against a database of more than 47 million images and 9.5 million keywords. Some are automatically blocked while others move directly to human review, and repeat offenders lose their stores.
“Our goal has been to deliberately shift the work of protection from the rights holders to the platform. For every listing a brand reports to us, more than 300 come down through our own proactive monitoring,” says Ms. Casaceli.
When users search for a brand name combined with a word such as “counterfeit,” “fake,” or “dupe,” they see a consumer-facing notice that counterfeits are not permitted, steering them toward legitimate search terms.
"In addition to copyright and trademark rights, it’s important to review patent rights, if there are any."
- Kristi McIntyre | Bausch + Lomb (USA)
Get Sophisticated
But while brand owners are employing comprehensive, IP-wide strategies to counter lookalike producers, their opponents are also adapting to get around attempts at brand protection.
According to Ms. Schrader, they are becoming more sophisticated by doing just enough to avoid infringement claims while still benefiting from a brand’s reputation.
“That sophistication requires an equally sophisticated response from brand owners: proactive registration strategies, regular market monitoring, and test purchasing programs that can reveal whether what is marketed as a ‘dupe’ is in fact a counterfeit or a product making false claims. The enforcement playbook has to evolve as fast as the tactics do,” adds Ms. Schrader.
“The reality is that combating dupes requires more than traditional trademark enforcement. It demands coordination across trade dress, copyright, false advertising, regulatory referrals, and criminal enforcement,” she says.
"Our goal has been to deliberately shift the work of protection from the rights holders to the platform. For every listing a brand reports to us, more than 300 come down through our own proactive monitoring."
- Christine Casaceli | Temu (USA)
INTA Committees in Action
Effective brand protection against dupes involves more than trademarks. Three INTA committees—covering anticounterfeiting, designs, and unfair competition—are working on a range of initiatives to tackle the problem and provide brand owners with insights and successful strategies.
The Anticounterfeiting Committee launched a new structure at the beginning of 2026, when Ms. Schrader became chair, that includes a global committee hub focused specifically on complementary enforcement mechanisms that go beyond typical anticounterfeiting tools.
The Designs Committee, of which Ms. Guimberteau is a member, is collaborating with the Unfair Competition Committee to form a working group that is examining how existing legal frameworks can be strengthened and advocating for broader trade dress protection.
In November 2025, INTA’s Board of Directors adopted a landmark resolution (sponsored by the Unfair Competition Committee) calling for trade dress imitation to be actionable as unfair competition even where likelihood of confusion is not present, provided that the original has a well-known reputation, the imitation unfairly exploits that reputation, and alternative designs are available.
