SHEIN Trade Mark Disputes Highlight the Risk of Indirect Confusion

Indirect Confusion: When Different Trade Marks Are Still Too Close

Most branding disputes focus on a simple question: will consumers mistake one brand for another?

Under UK trade mark law, however, confusion is not limited simply to cases where shoppers directly misidentify the source of goods. Confusion can also be deemed to occur when consumers may assume that two brands are commercially connected, even if they recognise they are not the same.

This concept is known as ‘indirect’ confusion and can often be overlooked. It is a very important consideration for brand owners when developing new product names and sub-brands.

Two recent decisions from the UK Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) illustrate the point.

In separate cases concerning the marks SHEIN BELLE and SHEIN ICON, Roadget Business Pte. Ltd, the business behind the SHEIN fashion platform, failed to register these derivative SHEIN marks for clothing trade marks following oppositions by two different parties.

The UKIPO reached  the same conclusion in both cases. Consumers were unlikely to mistake the marks for one another directly. However, they could still believe that the products came from businesses that were economically linked through a collaboration, brand extension or licensing arrangement.

That finding of indirect confusion was enough for both applications to be refused.

The SHEIN BELLE dispute

The first case involved an opposition brought by Belle Lingerie Limited against Roadget’s application to register the mark SHEIN BELLE.

Belle Lingerie argued that consumers would focus on the presence of the word BELLE within the proposed mark SHEIN BELLE. Roadget’s response was that the addition of SHEIN, a highly distinctive and well-known brand name, changed the overall impression sufficiently to distinguish the signs.

The UKIPO accepted part of that argument. Consumers were not expected to overlook the SHEIN element and would recognise that SHEIN BELLE was not the same mark as BELLE. On a traditional side-by-side comparison, the differences between the signs were considered significant enough to avoid direct confusion.

However, what ultimately proved fatal to the application was the way consumers are thought to encounter brands in the real world.

A shopper seeing SHEIN BELLE on clothing is unlikely to analyse the mark forensically. Instead, they may simply assume that BELLE identifies a particular range, collection or collaborative venture operating under the broader SHEIN umbrella.

Since the word ‘BELLE’ remained clearly identifiable within the composite mark (i.e., that the SHEIN and BELLE words do not ‘hang’ together to give a new meaning as a result of the sum of its parts), the hearing officer concluded that consumers could infer a commercial connection between the Roadget and Belle Lingerie businesses even while recognising that they were not the same undertaking.

That conclusion was sufficient to prevent registration.

The SHEIN ICON dispute

The ICON opposition raised the same issue from a slightly different starting point.

Unlike BELLE, the word ICON is an ordinary dictionary term and carries obvious promotional overtones in the fashion sector. The earlier mark therefore did not enjoy the same level of inherent distinctiveness as a wholly invented word might have done.

Ordinarily, brand owners might take comfort from that. A less distinctive earlier mark often enjoys a narrower scope of protection. Yet the UKIPO’s decision illustrates that distinctiveness is only one part of the assessment.

The hearing officer accepted that consumers would notice the SHEIN element and would not mistake SHEIN ICON for the standalone ICON brand.

The difficulty was that the later application incorporated the earlier mark in its entirety without creating any new conceptual meaning. In those circumstances, consumers could plausibly view SHEIN ICON as a line extension, a co-branded offering or a product range developed in partnership with the owner of the ICON mark.

As a result, the opposition succeeded despite the absence of direct confusion and despite the relatively modest distinctiveness attributed to the earlier mark.

Point to note

For any business developing a new brand, the lesson is not simply to check whether a proposed mark looks different from an earlier right. A mark can still fail even where consumers recognise the difference immediately. The more difficult question is whether those same consumers might assume there is a brand extension at play, or that two businesses are involved in a licensing arrangement or collaboration.

The SHEIN decisions show that trade mark clearance exercises cannot stop at direct confusion. In markets where brand partnerships and sub-brands are an everyday feature of consumer life, the risk of indirect confusion may be just as significant. That remains true even when the earlier mark is not especially distinctive and even when a powerful house brand sits prominently at the front of the later mark.

The lesson is this: adding a distinctive house mark to an existing word mark may differentiate the trade mark overall, but it may not be enough if consumers are still likely to assume a commercial connection with the owner of the earlier mark. In the worst case scenario, this can be the difference between success and failure in the freedom to use a trade mark as well as register it.

Posted: 3rd September 2026