Uggs awarded $686M in lawsuits against Chinese counterfeit boots

Uggs are like the Nickelback of footwear — they rake in obscene amounts of cash, but no one admits to wearing their product (or listening to their music).

Deckers Outdoor Corp., the parent company of the ubiquitous sheepskin footwear, was awarded $686 million in lawsuits from over 3000 China-based websites selling cheap knock-offs of the product.

"Websites selling counterfeit Ugg products look very convincing because they use Deckers images and offer products at believable sale prices," Leah Evert-Burks, director of brand protection at Deckers, tells Fashionista.com.

Related: Mom takes 5-year-old to tanning salon, makes court appearance

According to the Daily Mail, this pay-out is more than half of the brand's sales last year, which totaled $1.2 billion. Having said that, the company only realistically expects to collect a fraction of the damages.

Some of the illicit sites selling the knock-off products had names like Uggs-forsale.com and Sparkleuggboots.com.

Deckers' spokeswoman Errin Cecil-Smith likened shutting down these sites to a notoriously frustrating carnival game.

"As quickly as we can find them, more sites proliferate," she tells the Chicago Tribune. "It's like Whac-A-Mole."

Related: Baby Boomer models are on the rise, catering to consumers of their generation

Deckers also won control of the website domains in the lawsuit. Those visiting such sites were re-directed to a page alerting the customer that the site previously used to sell counterfeit merchandise.

Whether you love them or hate them, considering how profitable it is to knock them off, it looks like Uggs are here to stay.

Watch fashion designer Leah Rose reveal her fashion must-haves in the video below.