Cadbury And Nestlé Are In A Legal Battle Over The Shape Of The Kit Kat Bar

Cadbury, the U.K. confectionary owned by Mondelēz International, Inc., is fighting Nestlé in an attempt to block the Swiss multinational company from trademarking the shape of the Kit Kat bar, reports Bloomberg.

In the United States, the Kit Kat bar is produced by the Hershey Company.

The battle inside the European Union Court of Justice in Luxembourg this week follows a previous dispute over the color purple, which Cadbury attempted to trademark. That attempt was blocked by Nestlé.

On Thursday, Nestlé lawyer Simon Malynicz told judges, "This is not a serious case about monopolizing shapes at all," asserting, rather, that it is about a chocolate that is "highly recognizable and much loved in the U.K."

This latest lawsuit challenges Nestlé's application to trademark the "four-fingered" shape of the Kit Kat bar, which sold approximately $61.4 million worth of bars in the U.K. between 2008 and 2010.

If the court does allow Nestlé to go through with the trademark, it "would open the floodgates to the registration of marks lacking the essential function of a trademark," Thomas Mitcheson, a lawyer for Cadbury, told the EU judges.