More Extremely Silly Trademark Lawsuits: Mars vs. Hershey Over Totally Different Looking Wrappers
from the you-put-your-chocolate-in-my-trademark-lawyer dept
A ton of people have been submitting variations on this story of how candy company Hershey is suing candy company Mars, claiming that Mars' new Dove brand of chocolate and peanut butter candies has packaging that looks too much like Hershey's Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. Most of the stories I saw didn't have any actual images to show, but the link here has the following two images:Update: As pointed out in the comments, Hershey's has a couple of newer packages that do appear a bit more similar, but still pretty different:
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Filed Under: candy, dove, packaging, reeses, trademark
Companies: hershey, mars
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My gosh
One's brown, the other's orange. Can't companies tell the difference?!?! It's just a freking wrapper!!!!
Glad i'm not in the mood for dissing both companies in a video... Oh wait, I just might..
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Re: My gosh
/sarcasm
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Re: My gosh
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This version is slightly more similar
But, seriously, Reece's packaging looks like crap compared to the Mars packaging. It's like Reeces are stuck in 1950. I can't imagine anyone would want to copy it.
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Re: This version is slightly more similar
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Re: Re: This version is slightly more similar
http://www.hersheys.com/ assets/images/reeses/products/product_clusters.png
Agreed. Still quite different though.
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Re: This version is slightly more similar
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Hey wait, this makes a great lawsuit.
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The title says it all
If Hershey's wins this it will be on a settlement to reduce legal costs, but in all fairness, MARS should have enough cash to suffer through this one and hopefully file a countersuit for frivolous litigation.
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Hershy vs. Mars
Whilst not the same, orange and brown are after all related colours. They are closer on the palette than primary blue and its complimentary orange.
This reminds me of a decision in Israel relating to allegedly distinctive gold coloured plastic ice cream tubs. See http://blog.ipfactor.co.il/2009/08/06/israel-ice-cream-wars-cool/
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Hershy vs. Mars
Whilst not the same, orange and brown are after all related colours. They are closer on the palette than primary blue and its complimentary orange.
This reminds me of a decision in Israel relating to allegedly distinctive gold coloured plastic ice cream tubs. See http://blog.ipfactor.co.il/2009/08/06/israel-ice-cream-wars-cool/
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Re: Hershy vs. Mars
Just for the fun of it I threw both pictures into Gimp and made them gray scale, they still look completely different.
All the Reese's packages have that tie-dyed look and all the Dove packages have that liquid chocolate thing going. I can't see anyone making that kind of mistake unless they were completely blind. And that would be a hole mess of trouble if that argument worked (think any candy bar vs any other candy bar).
I won't even go into "distinctive rectangular shape".
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Does Coke know?
Maybe Coke should step in and join the case as a friend of Hersheys! I'll bet everyone gets the Dove package mixed up with a can of Coke...
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Now I just have the Hersheies Squirts as that is what they have become. CRAP
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This one on the other hand....wtf? Honestly. Not even a blind person could confuse those two.
I like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups...I'm going to be sad when Hershey goes under b/c of money wasting crap like this and I can't get them any more.
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Re:
Actually I think those are the only people who could confuse them.
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http://www.hersheys.com/assets/images/reeses/products/product_cremes.png
I still think they are pretty different, but it looks a lot closer than what was posted in the article.
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http://www.hersheys.com/assets/images/reeses/products/product_clusters.png
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Re:
In case people don't feel like scrolling. Total BS claim for sure.
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Re: Re:
I think we've gone far beyond the 'moron in a hurry' and well into the stoned-outta-his-head-stoner test. Which is funny because a SOHHS wouldn't care which he has... they're both edible.
When will it become prohibitively costly in penalties for these frivolous lawsuits to be filed?
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Does it matter?
More legal drivel systemic in our over-litigated society.
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Updated...
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I'm intriqued, though, that Mike thinks the packing in this case is "a bit more similar" whereas he thought the packaging in the beverage case was not similar at all. I thought the beverage cans were pretty similar.
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well
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Re:
http://www.instructables.com/tag/type-id/category-food/channel-candy/
I like this one.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Homemade-Snickers-Candy-Bar-Recipe/
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perspective
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Re: perspective
Besides when I looked at that I immediately recognised "Dove" as being the american brand name for what's called "Galaxy" in england and they've used a similar style on their packageing over here for ages, which suggests to me it has far more to do with "corporate branding image" than anything else. Just coz they decided to offer another type of filling doesn't seem a good excuse for a lawsuit.
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Note
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Chocolate Lovers
and I definitely know the difference between a Hershey product and a Dove/Mars. With all the damn consumer surveys they do for everything else, you think that Hershey would spend a little money doing one of those on the subject instead of a lot more on litigation.....Every time I have to spend a $1.50 on something that used to cost .50 cents, I see the day coming that I can no longer afford to indulge. Why can't big companies like these take note of consumer popularity and loyalty and pass down the perks by spending less on advertisement (*which they hardly need now) and stupid litigation like this one.
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