Oatly loses trademark battle against British farm over oat milk | Hacker News Reader

Oatly loses trademark battle against British farm over oat milk

bbc.co.uk

Really disappointed in them.

How is Glebe Farm Foods [0], a small business, a threat to Oatly?

If Oatly really cared about sustainability then they'd congratulate a small producer joining the oat drinks industry... also an opportunity to generate positive PR, i.e. not doing business as usual etc.

This stunt just turned me off their brand.

I think consumers are clever enough to differentiate between Oatly and PureOaty.

[0] https://www.glebefarmfoods.co.uk/about-us/

Edit: clarity.

In essence companies are forced to be litigious about their trademark. If they don't defend them or become generic the trademark is lost. Even if Oatly believes that there is little to no risk in consumers confusing PureOaty, this might become a liability in future lawsuits

Thanks for clarifying, but they have no case here - even the judge agrees.

Would be interesting to know what they've actually trademarked? That no other brand can use a shade of blue on their packaging when selling oat drinks?

I can understand if Glebe Farms called their product Oaty, but they called it PureOaty - doesn't even start with the same letter and their packaging looks different, not as polished as Oatly's packaging.

Edit: In the BBC article they claimed the 'y' is the offender. But oaty is an adjective, hence the name PureOaty to create a product name.

> [Article] A spokeswoman for Oatly said the company would not be appealing the decision.

Oatly clearly agrees, too. The judge declared their brand/trade dress safe.

It's just not true though.

In the UK the only reasonable way that it might be conceived that Oatly would lose their many trade marks is acquiescence - they have to give way to a registered trade mark for a period of five years for that to occur. Degeneration (aka genericisation) is laughable far from a possibility in this case. I think https://www.ipo.gov.uk/t-challenge-decision-results/o32919.p... discusses most of the pertinent precedents.

In USA, for example in Abraham v. Alpha Chi Omega the trademark holders (AXO) had failed to sue for 50 years, they still came away with a result that Abraham could only use licensed decals on his paddles henceforth.

Register, pay your fees, ask people to acknowledge your mark, ... no need to be a sue-happy jerk. Of course nearly all the advice you find is from IP law firms saying you need to sue everyone who even looks at your trade marks sideways. Any caselaw refs that show I'm wrong gratefully received.

This represents my personal opinion, unrelated to my employment and is not legal advice.

that's not the case at all - why do you think it is? did you mix up what country this is in? did you not read the ruling?

the amount of extremely lazy and quite incorrect comments on HN has gone way up during the pandemic (or at least become much more noticable).

> I think consumers are clever enough to differentiate between Oatly or PureOaty.

I wouldn't. It took me a double take to notice the missing l, and that's with your sentence priming me to see a difference. In the store I might ponder on why the pure version existed.

Seeing them both in a store I'd have expected PureOatly was the unflavored version.

Interesting, but what would you expect the unflavoured version to be. Oats have a quite distinct taste. Or do you mean less sweet?

Anyway, thanks for your perspective. Don't you think the packaging is quite different though?

Oatly is quite bold, uses a unique style and using 'Original' on their packaging.

PureOatly packaging looks quite generic - a 'cheaper' design quality so to speak.

I just looked and I think you'd need to squint really hard to think they were related.

Different color, different font, different layout, there's literally no copying of Oatly's design other than the y at the end of the word Oat (which, as a common word, isn't brand able on it's own).

Again, role playing as me standing in the store trying to decide between these two Oaty miks I would either assume Oatly was a generic term for oat milk, or that the flavored version had a recent package redesign.

Keep in mind the designs can change. Right now I think with these two branding I would think Oatly was a generic descriptor.

The law of it very much takes into account brand design. Just because PureOaty won, doesn't mean they can change packaging and be immune to another suit.

I used to think I was allergic to oat milk - but apparently was only really allergic to Oatly's vanilla flavor. I did fine with other brands.

Oatly's overly litigious nature makes complete sense based on their ownership (from das Wiki):

"Oatly is now part-owned by The Blackstone Group (7%), Verlinvest, China Resources, Industrifonden, Östersjöstiftelsen, and the employees.[16][17][18] The group also included celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Jay-Z, as well as Starbucks founder Howard Schultz.[19]"

the size of Glebe Farms does not matter, if their oaty trademark is "valuable" wrt Oatly, then a large Oatly competitor could buy it.

Oatly makes a good product but disappointed to see them trademark bullying.

Their ice cream alternative is pretty good too.

They sort of have to, you can't selectively enforce trademarks like you can with other IP

Well in a sense yes but also they can pick and choose their targets more carefully.

For starters - PureOaty sounds nothing like Oatly. Secondly, it's made on minuscule scale at one farm from what I can make out.

I don’t think size matters for this kind of thing — if they grow, and you didn’t enforce action when they were small, you don’t have much claim when they’re large (and the violation is worth more, and they’re more established in it, and they’ve built more of a brand around it).

but yeah Oaty vs Oatly might have been reasonable but PureOaty is quite the stretch

No they don't. This is a common myth when it comes to cases like this.

If the defendants had been selling their product with the exact same name, or ripping off their logo directly, then you have a point.

》No they don't. This is a common myth when it comes to cases like this.

This is the UK, where digital reproductions of public domain documents do get a copyright. While I agree they overstep here (especially that a regular customer would see the two products differently), IP laws in UK are much more sensitive with these issues.

My exact thoughts, my wife and I have been fans of Oatly for a time. It's the only oat milk I've tried that tastes somewhat like cow's milk.

I always felt their branding and overall approach was on point which makes this quite out character and a total dick move on their part.

Try Vitasoy oat milk if that's available. Easily my favourite brand and much cheaper than Oatly (in Australia at least).

In the US, I prefer Chobani having tried many other brands. Also a decent company.

They're also partly owned by the state-owned China Resources holdings company.

That said, I still buy their products regularly. And I'm proud they started in my home town.

Indeed. The only oat milk or for that matter any non-milk milk that I like in my coffee. I don't see the similarities at all in the branding or packaging. Like oatly, glad they lost.

Have you tried the Chobani Extra Creamy? I now like it even better than Oatly.

Expensive though, at least in Germany it's twice the price of normal milk and they don't even have to hold cows. I understand it's also a smaller market but still, I wonder if this is really warranted. It also won't help less determined consumers switch away from dairy products, though luckily there are knock-off brands that also taste nearly the same.

Cow milk is also highly subsidised in the EU and sold at closer to zero margin because of the high control over the market relatively few retail chains have, especially in Germany.

Oldy but goody: https://www.kuechenstud.io/kuechenradio/episode/kr_121-milch...

Edit: obviously we shouldn't subsidize industrial farming and its carbon emissions and instead charge for these negative externalities. We are all paying for this cheap milk consumption with our climate.

If dairy products get more expensive, people will just switch to eating more meat. People outside of subsistence economies choose food on desires more than on price. I suspect far less negative environmental externality than you think.

TL;DR If bacon costs the same as cheese, might as well get bacon.

By the time you price in all negative externalities, meat would of course be even more expensive.

Afaik cheese might actually be worse than bacon, I think pig meat was about on par with cheese and only cow meat was worse (because cheese is so co2e-intensive, not because pig is so good), but I understand your general point.

I'm glad that Oatly lost the court case. The name and packing design of the other brand looked nothing like the Oatly design. It's baffling that Oatly even took this matter to court.

It's interesting that fresh, pasteurised cow's milk is cheaper than a carton of oat milk which is approximately 90% water + oats and thickeners. Almond milk is even worse: approximately 95-97% water + 2-3% almonds and thickeners.

When it comes to price, that's what government subsidies do for the cow's milk and high demand does for the oat milk. Although, I've seen Temple Grandin's methods live and a milk farm with milking robots basically runs itself (all cows just walk to the robot to be milked and the robot finds the teats with a bit of computer vision).

But yes, other than a good soy milk, most of plant-based milks are just empty calories.

Well, the Oatly Barista Edition matches cow's milk for nutritional content surprisingly closely - fat, carbohydrate, vitamins, minerals and so on. We give it to our toddler, who's allergic to cow's milk protein.

1g of protein per 100mL is not as much as cow's milk. Although, human milk also does have around 1g of protein per 100mL, so I guess it's fine for toddlers.

Tell me more about the milking robots fellow traveler, I need some entertainment after 6 hours of meetings today.

Milkbots and the teat detectors were great opening for Metallica!

Temple Grandin's corridors provide a stress free roaming path for the cows that feel the urge to be milked. The corridor ends with a proper curve that makes the cow stop right above the ground mounted camera that is trying to capture the teats. The moment the teats are visible, the mounted and immovable milking robot reaches out with the hand and is trying to catch on the teats with the feedback from the camera. Eventually it latches on and sucks around 20 L of milk. The cow for some reason stands still during the whole process and after it's done the cow continues forward, making room for the new cow that is waiting in line.

To be fair, cow's milk is also about 90% water. You're right, though, that the ingredient cost using commodity oats and rapeseed oil should only be about 4-5 cents per liter. The price of cow's milk, on the other hand, is a lot closer to the price of the inputs (corn, alfalfa, grazing land, etc.) which are about 16 cents per liter.

I'm hopeful that eventually the price of oat milk will approach the cost of its inputs, but it might take a while.

To be fair, you are about 60% water…

To be fairer, water is 99% H2O

I used to think that. Then I started wearing a continuous glucose monitor (levels) for longevity reasons. Holy crap, a latte with Oatly spikes my blood glucose like crazy compared to whole milk. There’s way more sugar in there vs fat and it really causes a strong insulin response. That isn’t the kind of thing you want to be consuming long term.

A good rule of thumb is low fat = high sugar and vice versa.

Yes agreed. Oatly is horrible for you. It's one of the worst Oat milks they sell in my store. (when comparing by nutrition facts).

It is so bizarre this alternative milk that goes around. I am totally onboard with finding an alternative to save cows from inhumane practice, however, very little of the alternative milk that is out there is anywhere near as healthy as normal milk.

Meanwhile anyone can produce any type of alternative milk and people think they are buying health food.

Headline has been slightly altered (or A/B tested). The original headline is "Glebe Farm", rather than "British farm".

That original headline is also slightly misleading, since it's really "Glebe Farm Foods", which is a manufacturer as well as a grower. It's not an enormous corporation; I saw an estimate of its revenue at $7 million.

But this headline has already prompted one remark that suggested this was about the "milk" part. It's not. It's one manufacturer suing another over the name of their oat milk.

I enjoy oat milk but my day to day milk replacement is regular unsweetened soya milk.

I do get oat milk once a week from my milkman so no idea what brand it is and it comes it a glass bottle that's collected the week after so pretty much zero waste.

My first thought is "How absurd! They're not alike at all!"

My second thought is "What nuance is the news story missing?"

I wonder if a bit of Gell-Mann Amnesia［1］ is in play for my first reaction

［1］https://www.epsilontheory.com/gell-mann-amnesia/

They are broths, not milks. No teats? No milk.

Like peanut butter isn't butter. Yet I don't need to hear people complain about it whenever nut butter is brought up.

And a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut.

Funny enough, it's not nut butter either, because peanuts are not nuts. And for that matter, they're not even peas!

Love my legume-paste and jelly sammiches!

Yes, and tomatoes are "actually" fruits, and peanuts are "really" legumes and almond butter is "not really butter."

"Milk" is a fine term for any opaque liquid, white-ish in color. Especially when it substitutes well for cow's milk.

Coconut milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, and soy milk are well established at this point.

milk of magnesia!

Oh no.

Adding this to your coffee is probably a bad idea. I'm going to start a campaign to rename it Broth of Magnesia to avoid such mishaps.

Everybody knows that Oatly doesn’t come out of a tit. Nobody is being misled.

You seriously overestimate the intelligence of the general population.

I would wager a sizeable percentage of people don’t know that dairy milk comes out of a tit.

I don't think being ignorant of something widely known counts as being misled.

What about coconut milk? That has been called milk for more than a century. Should we start calling it coconut broth instead?

Restricting the use of the word milk to mammal products is silly imo. From a consumer standpoint it makes sense to call milk alternatives <substitute> milk (e.g., soy milk, oat milk, etc.) to make it clear to the consumer that they can use it as an alternative to regular cow milk.

Milk of magnesia? Almond milk? Coconut milk? They don’t have nipples, Greg, but I can get milk from them.

Gatekeeping nouns has been a hiding to nothing since language began.

What’s next, telling us we can’t milk chocolate?

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