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Chocs away!

By Jeremy

The IPKat thanks his friend Jim Davies (Bell Dening) for this snippet from The Age concerning Cadbury Schweppes's battle -- now lost -- to control the colour purple as a trade mark for chocolate. More than five years ago, Cadbury objected to local competitor Darrell Lea using various shades of purple in its store signage, uniforms and product. Last Friday, however, Justice Peter Heerey ruled in the Federal Court that Darrell Lea's use did not amount to misleading and deceptive conduct, as Cadbury had alleged. According to the judge, chocolate eaters were discerning enough to tell their Cadbury's from their Darrell Lea. Said the judge:

"Consumers are never presented at the point of sale with a Cadbury product, in purple or not, without the Cadbury name prominently displayed. The ordinary reasonable consumer is to be credited with awareness of this when confronted with the allegedly misleading Darrell Lea product".

Cadbury Schweppes is to appeal, though:

"Cadbury Schweppes has deliberately established a connection between our shade of purple and Cadbury chocolate, and many consumers associate Cadbury purple with Cadbury chocolate. We remain totally committed to protecting our brand identity and Cadbury will appeal this decision".

This member of the IPKat team, who is largely colourblind but whose reading age is pretty good for a Kat, is musing about the notion of association. He associates football teams such as Arsenal, Manchester United and Liverpool with red, for example, and expects them to be wearing red when he sees them -- but he doesn't think of Arsenal, Manchester United or Liverpool when he sees the colour red. For a colour to work as a trade mark, he would expect the colour to trigger the association with the thing coloured. Merpel wonders, if confectionery companies were as committed to their loyal consumers as they were to their brands, would they perhaps think twice before making all those annoying changes in their popular products?

Full text of this case -- the eighth in the series between these two parties -- here (Tufty says, if you think chocolate is addictive, you should try litigation)
Darrell Lea here
Cadbury's Purple Reign here
Deep Purple here
Death by chocolate here
Cure for chocoholics here
How to remove chocolate stains here
Another Chocolate War here

Full post as published by IPKat on April 14, 2008 (boomark / email).