Tackling beauty lookalikes

Our friends at SnapDragon Monitoring recently wrote about the impact of counterfeiting and lookalikes on beauty brands.

I find the issue of lookalikes captivating as intellectual property enforcement can be quite tricky in those cases. Whilst counterfeit products very often integrate identical or confusingly similar word marks - they are “fake”, non-authorised copies of the original goods - lookalikes instead mimic the product without claiming that they are the genuine article. 

There are a lot of cases and discussions around supermarket lookalikes, but the problem is also affecting the cosmetics sector with an increasing number of “dupes” flooding the market. The difficulty is that there is clear consumer demand for such lookalike (and obviously cheaper) products. For example, I can see many social media “influencers” in the beauty space who actively look for, and share examples of, dupes to their online community. 

The consequence these mimicking goods have on brands is mainly revenue loss and dilution (detriment to distinctiveness). The brand owner is not only losing out on sales - while the lookalike brand is taking unfair advantage of a certain consumer attraction - but the mark’s ability to identify the goods as coming from its proprietor is also weakened because use of the dupe leads to dispersion of the identity of the earlier reputed mark by making it less unique.

The key to tackling beauty lookalikes is to have a robust IP portfolio, which, in addition to protecting the house brand and product names, has a strong "combination of rights" strategy, incorporating copyright, design rights, and non-traditional trade marks such as product packaging and get-up.

If you are interested by the subject of lookalikes and consumer behaviour, I recommend reading “The Psychology of Lookalikes” by Influence at Work.

At M&C, we have a team passionate about Beauty & Cosmetics who would love to have a chat if you have any questions on protecting your IP in this sector, or if you have encountered lookalike issues. Get in touch with Julie Canet, Becca Davey and Inès Garlantezec!