Marks and Spencer have carried on their trade mark crusade, and this time took aim at Hertfordshire gelato company.
Fabio’s Gelato based in Hitchin offers it customers a wide range of flavours and last week created a new flavour inspired by a well known pig. The Percy Pig ice cream went on sale and immediately came under fire.
Marks and Spencer within the week of the product going on sale, sent a letter to Fabio’s explaining that they were free to use the sweets within the ice cream but were not authorised to use the name in their own product name.
Such use may amount to trade mark infringement as Marks and Spencer hold a number of trade marks, protecting the brand name for ‘Percy Pig’.
Fabio Vincenti, the owner of the ice cream parlour, described the letter from M&S as being ‘polite and fair’, and he wasn’t surprised to receive it. Despite having made and sold flavour inspired by big brands for quite a while without an issue, Mr Vincenti respected M&S’s position in protecting their trade marks.
The letter from M&S stated that “Percy Pig is one of our ‘hero’ brands and we own trade marks to protect it. We risk losing those trade marks (and more importantly to us, consumers will no longer be confident Percy Pig-branded products originate from M&S) if we do not take steps to stop others from using them without our permission.”
The ice cream has now been rebranded to “Fabio’s Pig”.
If you would like to discuss how to protect your brand name, then please get in touch with the Trademarkroom team today.
