Moroccanoil Israel Ltd v Aldi Stores Ltdt, Intellectual Property Enterprise Court
Moroccanoil Israel Ltd, the company famous for selling hair-oil-products endorsed by the likes of Marion Cotillard and Jennifer Lopez, has failed to prove that budget supermarket giant Aldi was passing off its “Miracle Oil”’ product as MIL’s own “Moroccanoil”.
MIL argued that a combination of its product’s distinctive name and individual product “get-up” (namely a brown bottle with a turquoise label) created a unique product to which goodwill in MIL was attached. Aldi had also chosen to use a brown bottle, turquoise label and orange graphics for Miracle Oil’s packaging. MIL maintained that the resemblances between the two products’ names and get-up created misrepresentation by Aldi and as a result, damage was done to MIL’s goodwill. The Intellectual Property Enterprise Court disagreed with MIL.
Even though the Court agreed that Aldi had consciously created Miracle Oil’s packaging to be reminiscent of Moroccanoil, it ruled that there was not enough evidence to conclude that consumers would be misled into assuming (rather than wondering) that Aldi’s product was the same product as MIL’s, or was made by the same manufacturer. This case highlights the problems that famous products have with stopping lookalike products in the UK, where consumers’ minds associate the lookalike product with the more prestigious one, but without them being confused.
This case did not consider arguments for trade mark infringement as the validity of MIL’s Community Trade Mark is currently being challenged in the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market. Stay tuned for further updates.