Amazon Sued For Selling Smarties

from the dumbies dept

I remember, as a kid, enjoying "Smarties" candies, which were basically hard pill-like tablets of pure sugar that were sold in rolls. It turns out that in the rest of the world, there's a totally different kind of Smarties, made by Nestlé, which appear to be something like M&Ms (honestly, I had no idea). Those Smarties have been around since 1882. The American kind of Smarties (the sugar pills) have been made by Ce De Candy since 1942. Of course, now we live in a global world, and the two types of Smarties are coming into conflict, with Amazon in the middle. Apparently, the Ce De Candy company has obsessively kept the real Smarties out of the US for years (hence my ignorance of them). In other countries, Ce De Candy has rebranded its Smarties -- such that, in Canada, they're called Rockets. However, it apparently has no interest in doing so in the US, so we're left without the Smarties the rest of the world knows and loves.

But, yes, in this global world, with lots of immigrants and travelers, plenty of people in the US would like the other kind of Smarties, and found they could get their supply via Amazon. And, for that Amazon is facing a lawsuit by Ce De Candy, claiming trademark infringement. I can't see how Amazon should be the one to be blamed here, though. It is accurately selling products. In fact, my guess is that it's not even Amazon doing the selling, but some of Amazon's merchants who are actually fulfilling the market desire for the "real" Smarties. Unfortunately, due to some legal quirks, trademark law doesn't have an automatic safe harbor, like the DMCA or Section 230 of the CDA, protecting third party service providers from lawsuits over actions of their users. But, either way, hopefully a court recognizes that this whole thing is ridiculous and tells Ce De Candy to go pound sugar...

Filed Under: smarties, third party liability, trademark
Companies: amazon, ce de candy, nestle