For decades, Ritter Sport has marketed its chocolate bars on their extraordinary, square form.
So when Swiss label Milka challenged its German monopoly on square chocolate, the war traces had been drawn.
Milka carried out an initial victory in 2016 by getting the patent deleted however that ruling used to be overturned.
In the raze, the case ended up within the Federal Court of Justice, where judges compile now thrown out Milka’s complaint and dominated in favour of Ritter Sport.
First, the historical previous
The square bar dates wait on to 1932, when Clara Ritter came up with the root, constant with company myth. “Let’s make a chocolate bar that suits in every person’s jacket pocket with out breaking and weighs the identical as a usual long bar,” she is supposed to compile acknowledged (though in German).
By 1970 it had come up with the slogan “Quadratisch, praktisch, gut” – quality, chocolate, squared, because the company likes to translate it.
The family company patented the form in 1993, so when Milka started marketing a square bar in 2010, the case went to court docket.
Milka, now owned by Mondelez, received spherical one within the federal patent court docket however that ruling used to be later thrown out and the patent court docket made up our minds the next One year that Ritter would possibly possibly possibly maybe preserve its 3-dimensional monopoly.
Milka’s last peril within the Federal Court of Justice has now furthermore failed.
What the judges acknowledged
In overall a label can’t claim safety in Germany if its form offers the product “an predominant price”. Nonetheless the judges in this case acknowledged Ritter Sport used to be diversified.
Patrons thought to be the square nature of the chocolate bar as a signal of both where the chocolate came from and its quality, they concluded.
They acknowledged there used to be no inventive price to the form and it did no longer result in differences in trace.
Their ruling capacity that the incumbent bar can remain basically the most efficient top-label square chocolate bar on the cabinets in German outlets.
