Cambridgeshire Oat farm wins legal battle with Oatly
Watch our reporter Matthew Hudson's report
A family-run company sued by oat milk giant Oatly for alleged trademark infringement has won a legal battle against the multimillion-pound firm.
Oatly brought legal action against Glebe Farm Foods, a Cambridgeshire-based company that specialises in producing gluten-free oats, accusing them of attempting to take "unfair advantage" of Oatly's trademarks with their oat drink called "PureOaty".
Glebe Farm Foods in Kings Ripton, near Huntingdon, is run by brother and sister Philip and Rebecca Rayner.
They denied the claims and in a judgment today, Judge Nicholas Caddick QC ruled in favour of the siblings.
During a two-day hearing in June, the High Court in London heard that the farming company launched an oat milk in 2019 called "Oat Drink", before launching the rebranded "PureOaty" in 2020.
Oatly's lawyers argued that Glebe Farm Foods had infringed five of their firm's trademarks with the "PureOaty" name and the drink's packaging, as well as "passing off" their product as Oatly's.
Judge Caddick found 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
However, the judge said the similarities were "at a very general level".
Oatly's lawyers had also argued that customers could be confused into believing that PureOaty was a type of Oatly product, but had not produced any evidence.
Judge Caddick said:
The court heard that Oatly had sold more than £38 million of their "barista edition" oat milk, and more than £13 million of other varieties.
Judge Caddick continued:
He concluded: "There is a relatively low or, at best, very modest level of similarity between the sign and the marks and that similarity is due to the presence in both the sign and the mark of the letters 'oat' that are descriptive of the relevant products."
After the ruling, Mr Rayner said: "We have had the threat of this court case - which has pitched our challenger brand against Oatly's multinational business - looming over us for more than a year."We have always felt certain that we have done nothing wrong, and we were determined to fight Oatly's claims that our brands were similar - something that is now proven to be wrong."