Lindt bunnie shapes "not distinctive"

The spokesman for Lindt was
not available for comment
Friday is said by some to be a good day for leaving Luxembourg, in any direction, in search of fun. But today is different: the tiny Duchy is at the centre of a good deal of concentrated rage from the chocolate animal manufacturing industries.. In Cases T-336/08, T-337/08, T-346/08, T-395/08 Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Spruengli v OHIM and T-13/09, Storck v OHIM the General Court of the European Union ruled that chocolate bunnies, mice and reindeer are not protected species, at least when the protection sought is that of a Community trade mark.

According to the Court, rabbits, reindeer, mice and small bells are typical shapes in which chocolate and chocolate goods are presented  --particularly at Easter and Christmas.  As such the shapes are devoid of any distinctive character.

Swiss-based Lindt has so far failed to get EU-wide trade mark protection for the shapes of a plain chocolate bunny and for chocolate bunnies and reindeer wrapped in gold foil with red ribbon around their necks. It has also failed to get protection for the ribbon and attached bell. Berlin-based Storck has unsuccessfully sought Community trade mark bid for the shape of a chocolate mouse.

The Kat would have liked to bring some details of the reasoning, and perhaps a quote or two, but the rulings appear to be available only in French and German.  You can access them via the Curia search facility here.

Source: Stephanie Bodoni, Bloomberg.
Lindt bunnie shapes "not distinctive" Lindt bunnie shapes "not distinctive" Reviewed by Jeremy on Friday, December 17, 2010 Rating: 5

4 comments:

  1. Maybe the industry will have to adapt - by making distinctive chocolate cats. Tufty and Merpel should get registered ASAP.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hoorah. Food items shaped like animals to make them more inviting to purchasers and consumers are marketing functional and don't warrant protection.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Aldi were quick off the mark to sell their own chocolate reindeer:

    http://www.aldi.co.uk/uk/html/product_range/16260_16265.htm

    or were they selling these before the General Court issued its opinion?

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Powered by Blogger.