Thatchers’ cloudy lemonade trademark row with Aldi back in court

British cider brand Thatchers is back in court today as it seeks to overturn a ruling that said Aldi did not infringe its trademark over its cloudy lemon cider.

Thatchers launched a trademark legal battle against the German food chain back in 2022 over its cloudy lemon cider, claiming Aldi infringed by creating and selling its cloudy lemon cider.

Thatchers brought out its canned cloudy lemon cider product in February 2020 while Aldi created its cloudy lemon cider, known as Taurus, in May 2022.

The issue at the heart of this dispute was the overall look of Aldi’s product as Thatchers’ case was it was highly similar to that of its own lemon cider.

One of the issues of the case was the colour palette of yellows and greens and the background of creamy-yellow, as Thatchers legal team argued it added to the likelihood of confusion.

While the German store stated the colour palette was ubiquitous to lemon-flavoured drinks.

In addition, the use of ‘Taurus’ was another issue, as the cider company stated the likelihood of confusion as it looked similar to its brand name ‘Thatchers’

At the start of this year, the High Court sided with Aldi ruling that there is no likelihood of confusion between the brands.

On the colour issue, the judge was satisfied with Aldi’s defence, stating “it is not surprising that both parties have used it to distinguish their lemon cider product”.

The court dismissed Thatchers’ claim against Aldi in January, but in March, Thatchers filed a notice to appeal this decision.

The parties are back in court at the Court of Appeal on Tuesday and Wednesday as the cider company seeks to overturn this decision.

Commenting on this appeal, Mary Bagnall, head of intellectual property at Charles Russell Speechlys explained that “appeals in cases such as these are particularly difficult because the Court of Appeal may only intervene if the judge’s findings of fact were rationally insupportable, or in making her multi-factorial evaluation of the issues, she erred in law or principle.”

She added that “it is immaterial whether the Court of Appeal finds the decision surprising or whether it would have come to a different conclusion”.

Aldi was in a couple of high profiled trademark disputes with Marks and Spencer (M&S) over the years including over its Colin the Caterpillar cake and light up gin bottles.