cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43030335
Plant-based drink maker Oatly has lost a long-running legal battle over its use of the word “milk” in its marketing.
The Swedish company tried to trademark the slogan “post-milk generation” in the UK in 2021 but Dairy UK, the representative body for British dairy farmers, objected.
Following rulings in several courts, the UK Supreme Court on Wednesday said Oatly could neither trademark nor use the phrase “post-milk generation”.
The long-running dispute has centred on Dairy UK’s argument that, under trademark law, the term “milk” can only be used to refer to products that come from an animal.
Alpro had a dispute with their soy milk too in Italy.
In Italian, milk is “latte” (double t, important for the question).
They got said that they can’t call the product “latte” because it is not milk as it doesn’t come from an animal.
They created a new packaging with a huge writing saying: “Questo non è LATE” (with a single T). It could roughly be translated to English as “This is not MYLK” . They are still selling it because they are not selling milk.
Edit: apparently it’s not just an Italian thing as they sell it in English as “not MLK”! Funny tho, I almost got the name right without knowing it!
Here, those are called “Not MLK”. I didn’t realize they translated it for some countries.
I didn’t even notice that it was “MLK” and not “MILK.”
This reminds me of “don’t think of an elephant” type of stuff, LOL.
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The first time I tried it, and it didn’t melt on a hot potato, I said “I can believe it’s not butter.”