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Mondelēz International has filed a lawsuit against retail chain Aldi, alleging that the retailer has ‘blatantly’ copied the packaging designs for several of Mondelēz’s well-known cookie and cracker brands.
In court documents filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois last week, Mondelēz argues that Aldi’s use of private label packaging across several cookie and cracker products enable the retail group to ‘trade upon the valuable reputation and goodwill Mondelēz has developed in its longstanding, highly distinctive and well-known trade dress for numerous of its cookie and cracker snack products’.
Mondelēz claims that Aldi has engaged in willful trademark infringement, trade dress infringement, unfair competition, unjust enrichment and dilution of its brand identities.
The company said it has contacted Aldi previously and ‘on numerous occasions’ objecting to Aldi’s use of similar packaging to products under Mondelēz’s Oreo, Teddy Grahams, Belvita and Tate’s Bake Shop biscuit brands, as well as its Triscuit crackers.
While Aldi has previously discontinued ‘infringing’ products in response to Mondelēz’s complaints, the snack giant alleges that the retailer has continued to engage in a known pattern and practice of selling ‘unacceptable’ copycat products.
The products in question, shown in the court documents, include Aldi’s own-brand Original Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, which Mondelēz shows next to its popular Oreo cookies product with similar blue packaging and a lighter blue halo around the cookie.
It also highlights similarities to Mondelēz’s packaging designs for its Wheat Thins, Nutter Butter, Chips Ahoy, Nilla, Ritz and Premium biscuit and cracker products across a range of Aldi’s similar own-brand products, such as Thin Wheats and Vanilla Wafers.
Mondelēz is seeking damages, injunctive relief and jury trial, stating in the filing that Aldi’s use of the ‘infringing’ packaging designs are ‘likely to deceive and confuse customers,’ as well as ‘threatening to irreparably harm Mondelēz and its valuable brands’.
The lawsuit follows another recent high-profile trademark infringement legal battle between Aldi and British cider maker Thatchers, in which the UK Court of Appeal ruled that Aldi’s Cloudy Lemon Cider took ‘unfair advantage’ of Thatchers’ brand.
