Oatly loses trademark battle against Glebe Farm over oat milk

Multi-Million pound company Oatly recently took a UK family run business – Glebe Farm Foods to court over a trademark dispute. Lawyers for Oatly claimed that Glebe Farm, which rebranded its Oat Drink product as PureOaty in 2020 (previously known as “Oat drink”), intended “to bring Oatly’s products to mind”, benefiting from Oatly’s brand. They also claimed that the name PureOaty was similar to Oatly, as was the product’s blue packaging and image of a teacup. Ruling in favour of the farm, Judge Nicholas Caddick QC, said while there were similarities between the initial PureOaty packaging and the Oatly packaging, including the use of the colour blue and the use of an irregular font for the product name, these were “at a very general level”.

Photo by Toa Heftiba Şinca from Pexels

Philip Rayner, Glebe Farm’s owner and managing director, said: “It is enormously gratifying that the judge has ruled in our favour, and to see that smaller independent companies can fight back and win. We can now forge ahead with PureOaty and our oat milk enterprise.” Oatly said it fully accepted the court’s decision and would not file an appeal. It said that while for some this might be seen as vindication for small oat drink companies over big oat drink companies, for the Swedish group, “this case has always been about protecting our trademark and how the single letter Y creates too much of a similarity between Oaty and Oatly”.

If you have any enquiries relating to trademarks and intellectual property, please contact Christopher Buck on 01908 660966 / 01604 828282 or email Christopher.buck@franklins-sols.co.uk