Arla is no longer allowed to sell dairy products under the name ‘skyr’ in Finland.
The Swedish company has been selling products labelled skyr in Finland for some time, marketing them as ‘the Icelandic super yogurt’. According to the Reykjavík newspaper Morgunblaðið, this has frustrated the Icelandic dairy MS Iceland Dairies, which claims exclusive rights to skyr – claiming ‘skyr’ was not a product type but a specific trademark.
Arla was given one week to remove any skyr products from shelves, as Finnish courts ruled that skyr is a trademark owned by MS. According to the court all dairy products sold as skyr in Finland have to be produced by MS, according to an MS recipe. But the product does not have to be manufactured in Iceland.
Before the lawsuit, MS Iceland Dairies produced an advertisement poking fun at Arla’s Skyr. In the video, a tub of Arla Skyr is seen struggling to understand Icelandic and mispronouncing the word skyr, while MS Iceland Dairies’ product is heard calling it “yogurt posing as skyr”.
Despite MS having registered skyr as a trademark in Norway and Finland, it is simply the name of a traditional Icelandic dairy product, similar to yogurt but made with whey. Skyr existed for hundreds of years before MS began marketing it and is manufactured and marketed by other dairies in Iceland. Nor is skyr a registered trademark anywhere other than Finland and Norway – a fact Arla has exploited, capitalising on the success of the popular Icelandic treat and selling it as ‘Icelandic super yogurt’ in Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK.
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