Oatly loses British trademark case

Glebe Farm Foods, a family-owned business from Cambridgeshire, has won a lawsuit against Swedish oat milk producer Oatly. The latter had accused the British farm of trademark infringement, but a High Court judge disagreed.

“Unfair advantage”

Oatly went to court because it thought ‘PureOaty’, a product of Glebe Farm Foods, was too similar to its own well-known oat drink, and thus took an unfair advantage of it. The lawyers of the Swedish company referred, among other things, to the brand name and packaging. In total, five trademarks were allegedly infringed.

Glebe Farm Foods, run by siblings Philip and Rebecca Rayner, launched an oat milk called “Oat Drink” in 2019. A year later, the brand was renamed “PureOaty”.

A High Court judge has now ruled in favour of the Rayner family. He acknowledged that while there were similarities between the PureOaty packaging and the original Oatly packaging, including the use of the colour blue and an irregular font for the product name, these similarities were “at a very general level”, the BBC reports. “I do not see that there is any risk of injury to the distinctive character of Oatly’s marks”, the judge concluded.

Unnecessary lawsuit

“You only need to look at the two products and packaging side by side to appreciate how different these brands are, and how unnecessary this legal action was“, Philip Rayner told the BBC afterwards. He added that it is “enormously gratifying… to see that smaller independent companies can fight back and win.”

Oatly has already said it will not appeal the ruling.