How come Aldi brands can basically copy brand designs without infringement?

17 comments

1. Court reasoning was that customers are aware they weren’t the legitimate item therefore the legitimate items weren’t being disadvantaged.

2. Nearly all own brands are made by the name brands either wonky seconds of name brands or a cheaper recipe made in the same factory.. Aldi Hula Hoop dupes are wonky real Hula Hoops they even get the packets mixed up sometimes.

3. Aldi occasionally gets sued by competitors if they go to far with look alikes. Colin the Caterpillar being the most well known example

4. Do you honestly the big manufacturers don’t make aldis products for them

5. Everyone’s saying the brand names made the off brand stuff, either wonky 2nds or cheaper ingredients….

   The packets are smaller too, the pound shop talked about it in a documentary years ago

6. Similar but legally distinct.

7. Ngl most Aldi own brand stuff is fire compared to the brands they are knocking off lol

8. There is a company called Two Sisters that used to make own label curries for every major supermarket. Literally, a whistle was blown, the line stopped, and the next batch were labelled differently. If they do it for curries then they doo it for everything. The only difference between Heinz and own brands is Heinz advertising budget (repeat ad nauseam).

9. One that made me laugh was Lidl sanitary towels. They’re called Siempre, which is Spanish for always.

10. I buy the ZX cola which tastes like Pepsi Max at a fraction of price (Lidl’s aint bad either)

    Some stuff is just as good, some weaker, some better. It’s pot-luck sometimes.

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    A lot of other stores will use main brands in an agreement. Some stuff from M+S (including clothing) is often made by the bigger companies just without the brand labelling.

11. They had to rebrand their ‘Norpak’ spread to be ‘Nordpak’ to make it more distinct from Lurpak. So it now has a Viking boat on the front to justify the ‘Nord’ phrase. So the brands do chase them from time to time. But generally it’ll be because no-one is seriously confusing the products.

12. They look similar but not identical. So Titan bars look very much like Mars bars but don’t pass themselves off as such.

13. They just DGAF

14. In earlier years, I worked in a dairy where the brand and the supermarket’s own were exactly the same product, down the same production line. You could tell by the pot shape and seal, and by the source details on the label.

    Years later, I could tell a supermarket had gone elsewhere for their own brand product as the two became different.

15. Private label and off brand

16. For the packaging designs, I think legally there needs to be 6 points of difference between brands.

    Obviously you can’t use the exact same shade of purple as Cadbury’s, but you can use similar colours and fonts.

    A lot of major brands (Tayto Crisps, Weetabix, Taylor’s of Harrogate coffee) also supply own brand as well as branded products to supermarkets – a lot of the time the only difference is the packaging.

17. M&S currently has Aldi in court over gin, so let’s see how that goes