Lululemon is taking Costco to task for allegedly knocking off its pants, hoodies and jackets and selling the dupes at a fraction of the price.
Filed Friday in a United States District Court for the Central District of California, the Canadian athleticwear brand’s lawsuit alleges that Costco perpetuated trade dress infringement and unfair competition by creating its own cheaper versions of popular Lululemon products like Scuba hoodies and sweatshirts, Define jackets and ABC pants, which range in price from $98 to $128. Some of Costco’s nearly-identical versions of these products retail for less than $20.
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According to Lululemon, the brand’s success has given way to the rise of knockoffs of its designs, a phenomenon that’s become so widespread that there is a “LululemonDupes” hashtag on TikTok wherein users share and promote copycat products. The infringing products create an improper association with the brand, with some shoppers believing they are authentic and others specifically purchasing them because they’re tough to distinguish from authentic Lululemon merchandise.
Lululemon asserted that Costco has been willful and complicit in perpetuating deceptive sales practices, writing in its complaint that it had already served Costco with a cease-and-desist letter to no avail. The similarities in the products have been well-documented in the media; the Washington Post published an article titled “Is That Hoodie a Lululemon or a Costco Dupe? No One Has to Know But You, while the New York Times ran a piece featuring the headline, “Are These $20 Costco Pants a Lululemon Dupe? We Investigated.”
The athleisure label also asserted that Costco is known to use manufacturers of popular brands’ products for its own Kirkland private label. The line, which has developed its own cult following, now accounts for over one-third of Costco’s sales.
Neither Costco nor its manufacturers disclose the connection between Kirkland products and the original branded products—a source of ambiguity that Lululemon said “preconditions at least some consumers into believing that private label, KIRKLAND-branded dupes are in fact manufactured by the authentic supplier of the ‘original’ products.” In other words, Costco consumers may believe they are getting the same product they might buy at Lululemon, just unbranded. “Defendant does not dispel this ambiguity”—and in fact, it benefits from it, the complaint said.
Now, Lululemon is seeking an award of damages in the form of lost profits, or other damages adequate to compensate for the patent infringement. It is also seeking an order permanently preventing Costco and any of its associated businesses or vendors from manufacturing, importing, advertising, marketing or selling products that infringe upon its trade dresses. The company is demanding a trial by jury.
