ALDI the German supermarket chain which has 9,000 stores worldwide, opposed an application for registration of the mark ÂBon Appetit by a UK cafe based in Gloucester. ALDI claimed that the registration of the mark would have caused confusion and association with two of their previous registrations for the words ÂBon AppétitÂ.
The ruling following the opposition proceedings was that the only similarity between ALDIÂs and the UK based cafes mark was the term ÂBon AppetitÂ. The failure of the opposition seems to have been based on the fact that the term ÂBon Appetit was considered a generic term and that the flags accompanying the parties marks contained flags bearing different colours.
The owner of the small UK based business commented that they were desperate to win the opposition proceedings due to the fact that if ALDI were successfull this would have had devastating consequences.
The legal representatives for the UK business commented Âwe explained to our client that they had a good case which revolved around the fact that generic phrase used in all the logos could not be protected and so it was down to the actual logo designÂ.
