M&S and Aldi face off in court over festive gin bottle fight

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Supermarket chain Aldi copied the look of Marks & Spencer’s “Instagrammable” festive gin bottles, the British retailer has argued at the High Court.M&S has sued its German rival for allegedly infringing the design of its “light up gin bottles” sold during Christmas 2020, whose “wow factor” it believes “got the nation talking”, the court was told.The dispute comes in the wake of a now settled copyright row between the two retailers which saw M&S accuse Aldi of copying its Colin the Caterpillar cake.M&S’s current legal challenge, first brought last December, alleges that Aldi’s 2021 gold flake blackberry and clementine gin liqueurs are “strikingly similar” to products for which it holds a registered design.Lawyers for M&S claim there was a “straightforward” infringement of its registered designs, with Aldi and its own products producing “the same overall impression” on shoppers.But Aldi, which denies infringement, contends that design features used by its rival were “commonplace” and “widely known across the sector”.Examples of the products at the centre of the case were brought to a one-day trial at a specialist intellectual property court in London on Friday, to show to Judge Richard Hacon.The bottles include buttons on their base to illuminate the contents.Daniel Selmi, representing M&S, said in written arguments that M&S and Aldi’s designs “have the same integrated light feature at the base of the bottle, the shape and contours of the bottle and the cork stoppers are the same, they both have gold leaf flakes, shown suspended, and they both have a winter forest silhouette graphic design”.The barrister added: “Plainly they produce on the informed user the same overall impression.“That is hardly surprising since Aldi