{"id":36435,"date":"2020-07-23T16:30:24","date_gmt":"2020-07-23T14:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/packaging-journal.de\/?p=36435"},"modified":"2020-07-23T15:16:46","modified_gmt":"2020-07-23T13:16:46","slug":"ritter-sport-judgement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/packaging-journal.de\/en\/ritter-sport-urteil\/","title":{"rendered":"Chocolate judgement is good news for all brand owners"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Federal Court of Justice (BGH) has announced a final decision in the trade mark dispute between Mondelez (Milka) and Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG has announced a final decision. The dispute over the trademark protection of the Ritter SPORT chocolate square, which has been ongoing for over a decade, has now been decided in Ritter's favour, meaning that the trademark will ultimately not be cancelled.<\/p>\n

With the application for cancellation of the two registered trademarks of Alfred Ritter GmbH & Co. KG by the former Milka group Kraft Foods (now Mondelez) at the German Patent and Trade Mark Office in 2010, the A decades-long legal dispute<\/strong> has been set in motion. The central subject of the legal dispute is the registration of the characteristic square shape of the chocolate as a German trade mark<\/strong>, which was registered on 24 May 1995.<\/p>\n

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(Image: Anna Stasia \/ Shutterstock.com)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Specifically, the protection applies to plain-coloured square packaging<\/strong> with a square packaging body without print, two distinctive, serrated side flaps and a transverse seam for creasing on the back, i.e. a so-called three-dimensional mould mark.<\/p>

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Mondelez sees the protected shape mark as a universal and common shape, i.e. a square, which other food manufacturers also use as a packaging shape. In 2016, the Federal Patent Court ruled in this sense<\/strong> and ordered the trade marks to be cancelled in order to make the square shape available to other manufacturers.<\/p>\n

Square packaging protected as a trade mark<\/h2>\n

The Federal Court of Justice took a different view in its decision of 18 October 2017<\/strong> and ruled that the square shape was not an essential utilitarian characteristic of chocolate. At the same time, it referred the case back to the Federal Patent Court to clarify the further question of whether the square packaging protected as a trade mark consists exclusively of shapes or other characteristic features that give the product an essential value. The Federal Patent Court answered this question in the negative in 2018 and also rejected the cancellation request in this respect.<\/p>