Mondelez International, the corporate giant behind many of America's favorite snack brands, is suing German supermarket chain Aldi over the various inexpensive lookalike products to be found in its aisles.
In a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday in Illinois, Chicago-based Mondelez said Aldi's packaging was "likely to deceive and confuse customers" and threatened to irreparably harm Mondelez and its brands. The company is seeking monetary damages and a court order that would stop Aldi from selling products that infringe on its trademarks. … In the lawsuit, Mondelez displayed side-by-side photos of multiple products. Aldi's Thin Wheat crackers, for example, come in a gold box very similar to Mondelez's Wheat Thins. Aldi's chocolate sandwich cookies and Oreos both have blue packaging. The supermarket's Golden Round crackers and Mondelez's Ritz crackers are packaged in red boxes.
Note a special case of the Streisand Effect: media outlets across the U.S. running lavish visual spreads of photos that Mondelez put in its lawsuit which essentially advertise cheap, delicious replicas of its high-margin hits.
Perhaps the real problem is not so much that customers can't see the difference but that customers can't taste the difference either. Why pay $5.29 for Oreos at Target when Aldi's own-brand ones are $3.99? The age when the latter tasted worse, notwithstanding the golden tongues of cookie sommeliers, is long-gone.
It's not Aldi's first rodeo. The company has recently lost actions in the U.K. and Australia along similar lines, which perhaps encouraged Mondelez to roll the dice in the United States.
British cider company Thatchers won a trademark case on appeal after an earlier loss, and Australian baby snack company Baby Bellies preailed in Federal Court there on a copyright claim.
