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Single color trademark: Cadbury beat Nestlé to successfully register purple trademark
Release Time：
2022-08-17
On July 7, the High Court of England and Wales overturned a ruling by the UK Intellectual Property Office and ruled that British food company Cadbury UK Ltd. could register the purple color on the packaging of its chocolate bars as a trademark. In 2013, the agency agreed with Swiss food company Nestlé S.A. that Cadbury's color mark application "lacked the clarity, precision, independence, permanence and objectivity necessary to qualify for registration."
On July 7, the High Court of England and Wales overturned a ruling by the UK Intellectual Property Office and ruled that British food company Cadbury UK Ltd. could register the purple color on the packaging of its chocolate bars as a trademark. In 2013, the agency agreed with Swiss food company Nestlé S.A. that Cadbury's color mark application "lacked the clarity, precision, independence, permanence and objectivity necessary to qualify for registration."
Cadbury was founded in Birmingham, England in 1824. In 2010, American food giant Mondelez International, Inc. acquired Cadbury. Currently, Mondelēz International is the second largest food company in the world, second only to Mars, Inc. of the United States. The purple Pantone color number on the packaging of Cadbury chocolate bars is 2685C. Cadbury claims the company has used the color since 1914, making it more than a century old. Cadbury chocolate entered the Chinese market in 1990, but due to poor sales, it was acquired by Mondelēz International around 2010 and withdrew from the Chinese market.
In 2004, Cadbury applied to register its iconic purple color as a trademark, but Nestle opposed it. Nestlé also has a product line called Quality Street that features purple packaging (pictured below). In 2012, a district court ruled in favor of Cadbury, which held exclusive rights to the purple trademark. In 2013, Nestlé successfully appealed. In 2019, the UK Intellectual Property Office declared invalid two Cadbury trademarks 3,025,822 and 3,019,361. However, the two companies settled their dispute over color registrations last year and Nestlé withdrew its objections to three Cadbury trademarks, according to documents filed with the High Court of England and Wales in June.
On July 7, the court judged based on the 1994 Trademark Law that "no matter what degree of actual distinctiveness a trademark has, but because it does not meet the basic requirements as a mark, its application for registration should be rejected anyway." reject". The court ultimately concluded that "if Cadbury's position did not meet the requirements, it was unlikely that any other applicant would do better".
Cadbury stated that the public could definitely associate the purple color on its packaging with Cadbury, and that any ambiguity could be resolved through the use of Pantone shades; the Pantone shade system accurately and permanently fixed the color and its use . Cadbury believes that although the burden of proof for registering a color trademark is heavy, the update of the Trademark Law covers more content that can be protected, including color.
The court held that this ruling does not mean that the difficulty of registering color trademarks has been greatly reduced, because trademark applicants need to provide convincing evidence to prove the "distinctiveness" of their trademarks in the minds of consumers; "Cadbury Purple" has It has been used for more than 100 years and therefore has this "distinctiveness".
Source: Internet Comprehensive
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