War of the golden bunnies

Lindt, manufacturers of those golden foil-wrapped chocolate Easter bunnies you see everywhere in the supermarkets, have just lost a thirteen year battle to prevent rival German chocolate manufacturer Confiserie Riegelein from selling something similar (as the latter say they have been doing for the past half century).

Lindt did, however, win an earlier case against an Austrian manufacturer Hauswirth's similar bunny.

It looks to me more as if you might be expecting Lindt's rivals to be fighting it out.

Lindt has had mixed success in its efforts to trademark the actual three-dimensional bunny but has been doggedly pursuing a legal cull of other golden chocolate bunnies through the courts. One of its justifications is that it spends millions on promoting the golden bunny and so deserves all the rewards to itself - never mind how long other lesser firms have been making and selling similar products.

The interests of the customers don't seem to figure much in the legal wrangles. It is not a matter of passing off - where customer protection would be the prime motive. It is not even about intellectual property or design or copyright, which would expire in the public interest after a fixed term. It is about trademarks, which are forever. Trademarks used to be signs and labels, that were applied to a product. So anyone could produce and sell yeast extract but they could not put the Marmite label on it, or a label that looked like Marmite's. Now the whole three-dimensional object can, sometimes, be registered as a trademark. It's fortunate that was not possible when someone invented the wheel, or the barrel, or the sheep.