I love settling for cheap imitations. Keep your Crispix and Dr. Pepper; I'll take Crispy Hexagons and Dr. Schnee. I'm Jason Toon and in this issue of Shoddy Goods, the newsletter from Meh, we're looking at what happens when the people who own the original brands aren't flattered by imitation.
A Mini Bear Graham by any other name… Last week, the junk food behemoth Mondelez filed suit against the global discount supermarket chain Aldi for what it called "unacceptable copies" of its flagship product designs. Mondelez says consumers looking for Oreos, Nutter Butters, Chips Ahoy, and Wheat Thins could be confused into unintentionally buying the cheaper Aldi imitations. Leaving aside the absurdity of that scenario - even as a kid, I was never fooled that store brand sandwich cookies were bonafide Oreos - there's also the fact that pretty much every supermarket does the same thing. The label on the generic cola is always red. The label on the generic sugar-free cola is always black. Nobody ever mixes them up with The Real Thing™. Generic cereal boxes are festooned with cartoon bees and rabbits. Somehow Western Civilization soldiers on. But it turns out this isn't the first time Aldi has been sued for this kind of thing. It isn't even the only copycat case they're fighting right now. Here are just some of the highlights of Aldi's long legal record with lookalikes. Tl;dr: the precedent isn't looking good for the German bargainmongers. Georgia-Pacific vs. Aldi The makers of Angel Soft toilet paper got their suit rolling in 2015. They suit alleged that Aldi's Soft Touch was a "blatant imitation" that "used the color teal, a picture of a baby, images of clouds, and the word ‘soft’ in a certain stylized font” to bamboozle shoppers into exposing their tender undercarriages to an inferior imitator. Aldi didn't even bother filing a defense, and a private settlement was reached a few months later. These days, their Confidence brand toilet paper pitches its wares without a cloud or baby in sight.
These cases didn't turn out so soft and sweet King's Hawaiian vs. Aldi That same year, King's Hawaiian bakery sued Aldi for selling "confusingly similar" Hawaiian Sweet rolls, "with the intent to trade off the enormous goodwill that King’s Hawaiian has earned." This one also went to a quick settlement, with King's Hawaiian Executive Vice President John Linehan saying the company was "very pleased with the outcome." Like a beach performer in Honolulu, Aldi was playing with fire: King's Hawaiian had previously sued the Sprouts Farmers Market chain for imitating its orange color scheme and windowed plastic bag. “We believe our trade dress is quite distinctive and famous," Linehan said, adding that their "excellent legal team… will vigorously pursue any infringement." Moroccanoil vs. Aldi In 2018, salon hair-product brand Moroccanoil took issue with Aldi's similarly packaged Miracle Oil. After winning a battle for an injunction against Aldi, Moroccanoil lost the war. A judge ruled that existing haircare products used the term "Moroccan oil", which not only got Aldi off the hook, but denied Moroccanoil's own registration of their name as a trademark, since you can't trademark generic terms already in wide use.
You can't win 'em all, or lose 'em all Baby Bellies vs. Aldi The 2024 judgment in this case was a more mixed bag. Australian children's snack brand Baby Bellies charged that Aldi's "Baby Puffs" line used specific design elements from their packaging. Aldi and their design agency, Motor Brand Company, made it easy with a paper trail of documents from the design process, specifically discussing how close they could come to the Baby Bellies design without infringing on the trademark. Oops. Nevertheless, the court found that only 3 of the 11 products in Aldi's line were infringing. Given the facts, that's almost a win. Charlotte Tilbury vs. Aldi When Aldi rolled out a dupe of Charlotte Tilbury's Filmstar Bronze and Glow palette, the UK celebrity makeup artist didn't take it sitting down. A judge agreed that Aldi's Lacura imitation infringed on Tilbury's copper starburst design, while Aldi shrugged that the infringing product had already been removed from shelves. No big whoop: Aldi's homages to high-end cosmetics continue to win fans among the beauty-and-budget-conscious.
Store-brand dupes go upscale Marks & Spencer vs. Aldi The grocery division of the high-end British department store Marks & Spencer has tussled with Aldi over trademarks a couple of times. Their popular Colin the Caterpillar cake was copied by Aldi as Cuthbert the Caterpillar, leading to a lawsuit and eventual amicable settlement. Far less amicable was the legal battle over M&S Gin Liqueur, a Christmas special featuring edible gold flakes floating in a bottle with an LED light-up base. Crucially, Marks & Spencer legally registered the bottle designs. So when Aldi rolled out their own light-up, gold-flaked gin liqueur as part of their Infusionist line, it was an easy case for Marks & Spencer to win. Thatcher's Cider vs. Aldi Finally, just this past January, UK cider brewer Thatchers won an appeal against Aldi for the similarities between their Thatchers Cloudy Lemon Cider and Aldi's Taurus Cloudy Cider Lemon. Again, there was a smoking email, with an Aldi's exec asking the design agency to "add lemons as Thatcher’s." Aldi has said they plan to appeal to the UK High Court, so there might be a few drops left in this can.
Which cider you on? But why Aldi? Which brings us to the Mondelez suit, which is a touch ironic considering Oreo started its life as a knockoff of an established product. There's no doubt Aldi is trying to evoke the feel of those more familiar products. Whether they're also using distinctive design elements will be up to the legal system. But however you might judge the merits of each of these cases, it's also undeniable that you see similarly similar store-brand packaging every time you go to a supermarket. For every Benton's Original, there are dozens of Creme Betweens, Black Powers, and Cream-Os.
I'll start pouring the milk. Image by Redditor Tylerak22 Yet trademark lawsuits over other store brands are almost nonexistent. I can't see any difference other than scale. Aldi has 12,000 stores around the world. Its 2,500 U.S. stores make it the biggest chain in America, too (not counting superstores). The next-biggest U.S. supermarket chain, Albertsons, has 2,300, followed by Publix at 1,476, Kroger at 1,260, and Food Lion at 1,110. The rest are numbered in the hundreds of stores at most. None have locations in every state or even every region of the U.S. So if you're Mondelez's law firm, it's a lot more cost-effective to sue one big global chain than dozens of smaller regional ones. Once a suit is filed, judges can decide the finer points of whether Aldi's packaging crosses the line. But those myriad local knockoffs never even get taken into court for doing essentially the exact same thing when they imitate major brands. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Aldi's real crime is just being too good at it. Given where I work, you might not be surprised that I’m not big into the value of brand names. I think half the time you’re just paying their marketing budget. but I realized I use Band-Aids rarely enough, and just want it to work the best, that it’s worth the extra buck or two to get the ‘real’ thing. When do you buy knock-off, and when do you stick to the brand stuff? Fill us in on this week’s Shoddy Goods chat. Beware of less shoddy imitators! Settle for nothing less than fully Shoddy Goods like these past issues:
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