The IP Runway: Issue No. 5
Intellectual property insights for the global business of fashion.
When Years of Silence Run into a Tube of Lipstick
Edition five isn’t really a fight over a name. It’s a fight over exactly how much goodwill survives the moment real money gets involved.
Christian Dior and the influencer brand Sincerely Jules never had to think about each other, until one of them needed exactly what the other one already owns.
The case, fast
Sincerely Jules started in 2009 as one woman’s personal style blog, years before “influencer” was even a job title. Seventeen years, a large independent following, and one full lifestyle brand later, founder Juliana Sariñana wants something new: her own name on a tube of lipstick.
This spring, Sincerely Jules filed with the USPTO to register its name for a range of cosmetics and fragrance goods, including fragrances, blush, foundation, lipstick, mascara, eye makeup, and nail polish, part of an apparent push to broaden its retail footprint well beyond fashion and lifestyle.
Dior said no. Parfums Christian Dior filed a formal opposition before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, arguing SINCERELY JULES incorporates its own JULES trademark in its entirety, a fragrance name it has held for more than forty years. Approve this registration, Dior warned, and customers are likely to be confused about who’s actually behind the product.
Dior isn’t arguing anyone got confused yet. It’s arguing someone might, and that possibility is enough to fight over.
Where the coexistence runs out
Sincerely Jules isn’t backing down quietly. Its June 23 response throws three arguments back. First, that the names create a distinct overall commercial impression side by side. Second, that the marketplace is already crowded with other “Jules”-formative brands, weakening any single owner’s grip on the word. Third, and most pointedly, that years of coexistence between the two brands, without any documented instance of actual consumer confusion, should count against Dior now.
That third point is the real fight. Sincerely Jules built its name in fashion and lifestyle categories, spaces where it and Dior have apparently coexisted for years without incident. The two businesses simply weren’t competing for the same customer, so nobody had a reason to fight.
Beauty changes that calculation completely. Fragrance and cosmetics sit closer to the center of Dior’s own commercial territory, the exact ground its JULES trademark exists to protect. It’s also precisely where influencer brands increasingly want to go next, since beauty margins dwarf apparel and a loyal following convert directly into sales the moment it’s pointed at the right product.
Coexistence was never a promise. It was just the absence of conflict, and that absence ends the moment the map changes.
Why this matters beyond one lipstick line
This dispute will double as a playbook warning for an entire category of brand. Influencer-founded labels increasingly follow the same route: build a loyal audience in fashion or lifestyle first, then expand into beauty once that following is large enough to monetize at higher margins. Whichever way the TTAB rules, this case will show every brand running that playbook exactly how much legal risk sits underneath it.
It also reframes what staying quiet actually means, legally speaking. A trademark owner’s silence isn’t the same as permission. Years without a challenge don’t function as consent, they simply reflect the fact that nothing worth contesting had happened yet. That distinction matters well beyond this one case, and it’s routinely misunderstood by smaller brands who assume that if nobody’s complained so far, nobody ever will.
Don’t expect a fast resolution either. Opposition proceedings before the TTAB commonly stretch well past a year once discovery and briefing are factored in. Sincerely Jules could be waiting into 2027 just to learn whether she’s allowed to sell lipstick under her own name, a long runway for a beauty launch to sit in limbo.
Reading the runway
Dior didn’t object for nearly twenty years while Sincerely Jules built an entire brand a few letters away from its own. It objected the moment lipstick entered the picture, and not a moment before.
That’s the real story here. Not a squabble over a name, but proof that goodwill has a shelf life, and it expires exactly when a bigger neighbor decides you’ve wandered too close to what actually pays its bills.
More soon.
The IP Runway
Sources: The Fashion Law, Net Influencer, Fashion Network, and filings before the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (Parfums Christian Dior v. Sincerely Jules, Opposition proceeding).
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