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The European Court of Justice has thrown out an appeal by the chocolate bar's maker, Nestlé, which argued that it owns the shape of the teatime treat.
Nestlé has spent more than a decade fighting to trademark the four-fingered wafer shape - something that rival Cadbury had fought hard against.
But Wednesday's judgement found that a previous court had been right to annul the decision by Europe's trademark group.
That could bring an end to the snack's protected European status - and a saga that has proved expensive for both sides.
It also takes the pressure off identical treats like Norway's Kvikk Lunsj - pronounced "quick lunch" and which has been around for 80 years - and opens the door to own-brand imitations at your local supermarket.
[...] Nestlé said that Wednesday's judgement was "not the end of the case" and that it believed the EU trademark office will side with the company anyway.
"We think the evidence proves that the familiar shape of our iconic four-finger Kit Kat is distinctive enough to be registered as an EU trademark," a spokesman said.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44939819
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(Score: 5, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 29 2018, @04:09AM (6 children)
Modded up. Those who don't understand how evil the beverage companies are, should step back and ponder a few things.
Water just falls out of the sky, with absolutely no input from humans, throughout most of the world. The Sahara is something of an exception.
Water just soaks into the ground, and accumulate in places like rivers, lakes, and aquifers.
It takes little to no energy to take water from these reservoirs, whether they be natural or manmade. A couple cents per gallon is an extremely high cost for pumping water.
Nestle takes this almost-free water from any source at all - including city water supplies - and bottles it into cute little Trump-sized, or woman-sized bottles - and charges you as much as three or five dollars, for the privilege of drinking their water.
One of the crazy aspects of this whole operation is - water is plentiful in much of the world. For, instance, the Mississippi river hasn't run dry in the memory of mankind. But, does Nestle take their free water from such a bountiful sourse as the Mississippi river? Why, hell no! Instead, they prefer to take water from a drought stricken state, that can ill afford to export it's water!
https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/environment/2018/05/21/nestle-bottled-water-controversy-becomes-campaign-issue-california-race/630370002/ [desertsun.com]
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday July 29 2018, @09:22AM (2 children)
I don't get the hate. If a company takes ordinary water, puts it into a bottle, and tries to sell it? Either buy the product, or don't. If you prefer tap water (as we do), then don't buy the bottled stuff.
What bottled water exemplifies is marketing. Getting people to pay to be trendy. You can buy a perfectly fine pair of sports shoes for well under $100, or you can pay twice that for "Air Jordans", which will fall apart within a couple of weeks. Is that evil? No, it's just yet another way to separate fools from their money, something that you'll find in practically every shop and on nearly every webshop on the planet.
Stupid people do stupid things with their money. News at 11:00.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 29 2018, @04:17PM (1 child)
Nestle wants you to pay more for your water. A lot more. They can afford to take that water and make a profit on it via their marketing. You will just drink that water. Where's the profit in that? They will push for increases in the cost of water and outbid you for it. If you want to drink water from a tap be prepared to pay A LOT MORE. People have pointed out numerous problems with this idea but Nestle just says "Fuck you, if you want to drink then you will pay". That's capitalism, I guess.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Sunday July 29 2018, @07:02PM
I'm not seeing it. Nestle isn't bidding against your municipal water. They go to some spring or other source that sounds "sexy", and put it in a bottle. Maybe, maybe a few local people are affected - but seriously, the total volume of bottled water isn't even a rounding error compared to the amount of fresh water on the planet.
Is bottled water a bit stupid? Sure it is. So don't buy it - leave Nestle sitting on their overpriced, sexily packaged H20. For some other people, maybe being trendy is worth the price.
Bottled water isn't even close to the most evil product on the planet. Just one example: homeopathy - that's a product that really, truly kills people, because they trust it over actual medicine.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday July 29 2018, @12:22PM (2 children)
Have you ever been to California? Fresno, I held a rally in Fresno -- tremendous crowd, by the way, huge crowd for that one, they love me in Fresno. And all around Fresno it's farms. Wall to wall farms, like you wouldn't believe. Where they grow so many wonderful fruits and nuts. Amazing what they grow there. In what, honestly, it was a desert. Takes a lot of water. A lot of water, a lot of it comes from wells. So much coming out of those wells, the ground is actually sinking. Folks measured the ground, they say it's sinking from that. Not from Nestle.
Beverly Hills, I have a little house on the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel. And in Beverly Hills, everybody has a swimming pool. Beautiful lawn. And so many fancy cars. Folks are very very rich there. But when they fill their swimming pools, they don't fill them with the Nestle water, with the Arrowhead water. And when they water their lawns, when they wash their cars -- obviously they have a guy to do that -- it's the same. They buy water from the city for that. The Arrowhead water is very special. Folks drink it, that's about all. And maybe they do the 8 glasses -- which, by the way, I think that's nonsense -- you think, "oh, they're drinking so much!" It's not so much.
Palm Springs, you put the article, the link to the article, from the Palm Springs paper. If you've ever been to Palm Springs, California -- it looks like a junkyard. The wind turbines, wind farms. Each one is made by a different group from, all from China and from Germany, by the way -- not from here. And you look at all these windmills, half of them are broken, and they’re rusting and rotting. You know, you’re driving into Palm Springs, California, and it looks like a poor man’s version of Disneyland. It’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen. They want a better environment? Tear down the wind farms. They're a terrible eyesore and they're killing so many birds.
But, water. So many golf courses around Palm Springs. They have golf courses like you wouldn't believe. Tremendous, tremendous number of courses. 124 golf courses, can you imagine that? Where, that's another part of California that would be a desert. Except for the water that's brought in. A lot from underground. And it takes a tremendous amount of water to keep those courses looking PERFECTO. And I'll tell you, they don't water them with Nestle. They don't water them with Arrowhead.
Folks in California, so-called environmentalists, getting up in arms about Nestle. Saying they're taking a lot of water. But you look at the whole thing, Nestle is just a drop in the bucket. Can we say that? And folks saying, "oh, they don't have a permit!" They don't have a permit, that's true. But a judge said that they're OK. That they did all the legal they need to do. As it says in that article.
Michigan, Nestle has a plant in Michigan. Lots of folks working there. And they expanded that plant, they hired more people. Michigan, as everybody knows, so many folks there need the bottled water. Terrible situation in Flint, right? And Nestle has a permit. But -- this is unbelievable -- the so-called environmentalists are up in arms. And sued the company. Because they wanted Nestle to pay more for the permit. Which they got at a very good price, I think it was around $200. And they sued because they said Nestle would be pumping too much water, that it's harming the lakes. Which, maybe you've heard of them, they're called the Great Lakes. Because they're HUGE. These are some of the biggest lakes around -- possibly the very biggest. But Nestle, according to the obstructionists, they wanted to pump too much water. Incredible!!!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday July 29 2018, @01:23PM (1 child)
I've been damned near everywhere. If you're an American citizen, it's VERY likely that I've been within 50 miles of your house. (I can figure those odds a couple of different ways, of course, but it works pretty much any way you want to work the numbers.) Yes, I've seen the sights you describe. And, I have always maintained that it takes a bunch of lack wits to pump all that water into a desert to grow stuff that would grow just as well somewhere else on the continent.
A drop in the bucket you say, and seem to excuse Nestle because of that. How about we end ALL of the stupidity. Cut all the subsidies on the federal and the state level for farmers who can't get by with their "fair share" of water. Farmers who are growing crops that are suitable and/or adapted to near desert environments maybe get a break - strawberry farmers lose their subsidies. I mean, WTF? Strawberries grow almost everywhere that isn't desert. True, they are a rather high risk crop, but the risk is even greater out there in the desert.
Stop watering all the lawns in Cal. That is so damned ignorant - and in Arizona too. FFS, people move to the desert, then they want to maintain a lush Kentucky field of grass? Jesus H. Christ, that is stupid beyond description. Want to live in a desert? Plant a nice rock garden, with a few cactus (cacti?) and maybe a few bushes that don't need to be watered.
Again - Nestle can build a damned water treatment plant, just about anywhere between Bimidji, Mn, all the way down to New Orleans, and pump all the water out of the Mississippi they want - and NO ONE will ever miss the water!
I'm as likely to buy water labeled "Mississippi Mud" as I am to buy "Sexy Spring in Cal". Which, in both cases, has a chance of near zero.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Sunday July 29 2018, @01:42PM
Folks tell me my tweets are too long. And possibly that one was too long for you. But I said that Nestle has a plant in Michigan -- where they have more water than the Mississippi, more water than anyplace -- and the obstructionists tried to stop them. Over not paying a lot of money -- in a state where nobody pays a lot. And, unbelievably, over supposedly pumping too much water!!