Oatly loses trademark battle against British farm over oat milk

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-58102252

by vanilla-almond • 5 years ago

46 60 5 years ago

bbc.co.uk

vorpalhex• 5 years ago

Oatly makes a good product but disappointed to see them trademark bullying.

Their ice cream alternative is pretty good too.

FairlyInvolved• 5 years ago

They sort of have to, you can't selectively enforce trademarks like you can with other IP

simonswords822• 5 years ago

Well in a sense yes but also they can pick and choose their targets more carefully.

For starters - PureOaty sounds nothing like Oatly. Secondly, it's made on minuscule scale at one farm from what I can make out.

function_seven3• 5 years ago

No they don't. This is a common myth when it comes to cases like this.

If the defendants had been selling their product with the exact same name, or ripping off their logo directly, then you have a point.

simonswords822• 5 years ago

My exact thoughts, my wife and I have been fans of Oatly for a time. It's the only oat milk I've tried that tastes somewhat like cow's milk.

I always felt their branding and overall approach was on point which makes this quite out character and a total dick move on their part.

octodog• 5 years ago

Try Vitasoy oat milk if that's available. Easily my favourite brand and much cheaper than Oatly (in Australia at least).

INTPenis• 5 years ago

They're also partly owned by the state-owned China Resources holdings company.

That said, I still buy their products regularly. And I'm proud they started in my home town.

anu7df• 5 years ago

Indeed. The only oat milk or for that matter any non-milk milk that I like in my coffee. I don't see the similarities at all in the branding or packaging. Like oatly, glad they lost.

ajmurmann4• 5 years ago

Have you tried the Chobani Extra Creamy? I now like it even better than Oatly.

lucb1e2• 5 years ago

Expensive though, at least in Germany it's twice the price of normal milk and they don't even have to hold cows. I understand it's also a smaller market but still, I wonder if this is really warranted. It also won't help less determined consumers switch away from dairy products, though luckily there are knock-off brands that also taste nearly the same.

ajmurmann4• 5 years ago

Cow milk is also highly subsidised in the EU and sold at closer to zero margin because of the high control over the market relatively few retail chains have, especially in Germany.

Oldy but goody: https://www.kuechenstud.io/kuechenradio/episode/kr_121-milch...

Edit: obviously we shouldn't subsidize industrial farming and its carbon emissions and instead charge for these negative externalities. We are all paying for this cheap milk consumption with our climate.

vanilla-almond• 5 years ago

I'm glad that Oatly lost the court case. The name and packing design of the other brand looked nothing like the Oatly design. It's baffling that Oatly even took this matter to court.

It's interesting that fresh, pasteurised cow's milk is cheaper than a carton of oat milk which is approximately 90% water + oats and thickeners. Almond milk is even worse: approximately 95-97% water + 2-3% almonds and thickeners.

knuthsat3• 5 years ago

When it comes to price, that's what government subsidies do for the cow's milk and high demand does for the oat milk. Although, I've seen Temple Grandin's methods live and a milk farm with milking robots basically runs itself (all cows just walk to the robot to be milked and the robot finds the teats with a bit of computer vision).

But yes, other than a good soy milk, most of plant-based milks are just empty calories.

sacred_numbers• 5 years ago

To be fair, cow's milk is also about 90% water. You're right, though, that the ingredient cost using commodity oats and rapeseed oil should only be about 4-5 cents per liter. The price of cow's milk, on the other hand, is a lot closer to the price of the inputs (corn, alfalfa, grazing land, etc.) which are about 16 cents per liter.

I'm hopeful that eventually the price of oat milk will approach the cost of its inputs, but it might take a while.

sshumaker• 5 years ago

I used to think that. Then I started wearing a continuous glucose monitor (levels) for longevity reasons. Holy crap, a latte with Oatly spikes my blood glucose like crazy compared to whole milk. There’s way more sugar in there vs fat and it really causes a strong insulin response. That isn’t the kind of thing you want to be consuming long term.

Wohlf• 5 years ago

A good rule of thumb is low fat = high sugar and vice versa.

spotman• 5 years ago

Yes agreed. Oatly is horrible for you. It's one of the worst Oat milks they sell in my store. (when comparing by nutrition facts).

It is so bizarre this alternative milk that goes around. I am totally onboard with finding an alternative to save cows from inhumane practice, however, very little of the alternative milk that is out there is anywhere near as healthy as normal milk.

Meanwhile anyone can produce any type of alternative milk and people think they are buying health food.

vnchr• 5 years ago

They are broths, not milks. No teats? No milk.

calvano915• 5 years ago

Like peanut butter isn't butter. Yet I don't need to hear people complain about it whenever nut butter is brought up.

lurquer2• 5 years ago

And a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.

tshaddox2• 5 years ago

Funny enough, it's not nut butter either, because peanuts are not nuts. And for that matter, they're not even peas!

function_seven3• 5 years ago

Yes, and tomatoes are "actually" fruits, and peanuts are "really" legumes and almond butter is "not really butter."

"Milk" is a fine term for any opaque liquid, white-ish in color. Especially when it substitutes well for cow's milk.

Coconut milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, and soy milk are well established at this point.

adtac• 5 years ago

milk of magnesia!

spoonjim• 5 years ago

Everybody knows that Oatly doesn’t come out of a tit. Nobody is being misled.

lurquer2• 5 years ago

You seriously overestimate the intelligence of the general population.

I would wager a sizeable percentage of people don’t know that dairy milk comes out of a tit.

DavidVoid• 5 years ago

What about coconut milk? That has been called milk for more than a century. Should we start calling it coconut broth instead?

Restricting the use of the word milk to mammal products is silly imo. From a consumer standpoint it makes sense to call milk alternatives <substitute> milk (e.g., soy milk, oat milk, etc.) to make it clear to the consumer that they can use it as an alternative to regular cow milk.

elliekelly• 5 years ago

Milk of magnesia? Almond milk? Coconut milk? They don’t have nipples, Greg, but I can get milk from them.

inopinatus• 5 years ago

Gatekeeping nouns has been a hiding to nothing since language began.

What’s next, telling us we can’t milk chocolate?

jfengel• 5 years ago

Headline has been slightly altered (or A/B tested). The original headline is "Glebe Farm", rather than "British farm".

That original headline is also slightly misleading, since it's really "Glebe Farm Foods", which is a manufacturer as well as a grower. It's not an enormous corporation; I saw an estimate of its revenue at $7 million.

But this headline has already prompted one remark that suggested this was about the "milk" part. It's not. It's one manufacturer suing another over the name of their oat milk.

uxcolumbo3• 5 years ago

Really disappointed in them.

How is Glebe Farm Foods [0], a small business, a threat to Oatly?

If Oatly really cared about sustainability then they'd congratulate a small producer joining the oat drinks industry... also an opportunity to generate positive PR, i.e. not doing business as usual etc.

This stunt just turned me off their brand.

I think consumers are clever enough to differentiate between Oatly and PureOaty.

[0] https://www.glebefarmfoods.co.uk/about-us/

Edit: clarity.

ajmurmann4• 5 years ago

In essence companies are forced to be litigious about their trademark. If they don't defend them or become generic the trademark is lost. Even if Oatly believes that there is little to no risk in consumers confusing PureOaty, this might become a liability in future lawsuits

uxcolumbo3• 5 years ago

Thanks for clarifying, but they have no case here - even the judge agrees.

Would be interesting to know what they've actually trademarked? That no other brand can use a shade of blue on their packaging when selling oat drinks?

I can understand if Glebe Farms called their product Oaty, but they called it PureOaty - doesn't even start with the same letter and their packaging looks different, not as polished as Oatly's packaging.

Edit: In the BBC article they claimed the 'y' is the offender. But oaty is an adjective, hence the name PureOaty to create a product name.

pbhjpbhj• 5 years ago

It's just not true though.

In the UK the only reasonable way that it might be conceived that Oatly would lose their many trade marks is acquiescence - they have to give way to a registered trade mark for a period of five years for that to occur. Degeneration (aka genericisation) is laughable far from a possibility in this case. I think https://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-challenge-decision-results/o32919.p... discusses most of the pertinent precedents.

In USA, for example in Abraham v. Alpha Chi Omega the trademark holders (AXO) had failed to sue for 50 years, they still came away with a result that Abraham could only use licensed decals on his paddles henceforth.

Register, pay your fees, ask people to acknowledge your mark, ... no need to be a sue-happy jerk. Of course nearly all the advice you find is from IP law firms saying you need to sue everyone who even looks at your trade marks sideways. Any caselaw refs that show I'm wrong gratefully received.

This represents my personal opinion, unrelated to my employment and is not legal advice.

bananapub• 5 years ago

that's not the case at all - why do you think it is? did you mix up what country this is in? did you not read the ruling?

the amount of extremely lazy and quite incorrect comments on HN has gone way up during the pandemic (or at least become much more noticable).

Danieru2• 5 years ago

I think consumers are clever enough to differentiate between Oatly or PureOaty.

I wouldn't. It took me a double take to notice the missing l, and that's with your sentence priming me to see a difference. In the store I might ponder on why the pure version existed.

Seeing them both in a store I'd have expected PureOatly was the unflavored version.

uxcolumbo3• 5 years ago

Interesting, but what would you expect the unflavoured version to be. Oats have a quite distinct taste. Or do you mean less sweet?

Anyway, thanks for your perspective. Don't you think the packaging is quite different though?

Oatly is quite bold, uses a unique style and using 'Original' on their packaging.

PureOatly packaging looks quite generic - a 'cheaper' design quality so to speak.

r00fus4• 5 years ago

I just looked and I think you'd need to squint really hard to think they were related.

Different color, different font, different layout, there's literally no copying of Oatly's design other than the y at the end of the word Oat (which, as a common word, isn't brand able on it's own).

r00fus4• 5 years ago

I used to think I was allergic to oat milk - but apparently was only really allergic to Oatly's vanilla flavor. I did fine with other brands.

Oatly's overly litigious nature makes complete sense based on their ownership (from das Wiki):

"Oatly is now part-owned by The Blackstone Group (7%), Verlinvest, China Resources, Industrifonden, Östersjöstiftelsen, and the employees.[16][17][18] The group also included celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z, as well as Starbucks founder Howard Schultz.[19]"

fsckboy• 5 years ago

the size of Glebe Farms does not matter, if their oaty trademark is "valuable" wrt Oatly, then a large Oatly competitor could buy it.

laurieg• 5 years ago

My first thought is "How absurd! They're not alike at all!"

My second thought is "What nuance is the news story missing?"

I wonder if a bit of Gell-Mann Amnesia［1］ is in play for my first reaction

［1］https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

Accacin• 5 years ago

I enjoy oat milk but my day to day milk replacement is regular unsweetened soya milk.

I do get oat milk once a week from my milkman so no idea what brand it is and it comes it a glass bottle that's collected the week after so pretty much zero waste.

Oatly loses trademark battle against British farm over oat milk

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