Ei der Daus: A dispute between two eggnog manufacturers was held on Tuesday at the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court. The spirits manufacturer Verpoorten from Bonn has sued its competitor Nordik from Jork in Lower Saxony. How could it be otherwise, it’s all about the egg.
The offense of the Lower Saxony, from the perspective of the people of Bonn: They advertised five bottles of eggnog for five different flavors with the addition “Egg, egg, egg, egg, egg”. As a result, Verpoorten’s lawyers see the interests of their clients violated (Az.: I-20 U 41/22).
For decades, they had invested a lot of money in the slogan “Eieiei Verpoorten” in order to burn it indelibly into the memories of millions of Germans. Of course, Verpoorten already had this slogan protected as a word mark in 1978 – which the company still uses eagerly today.
The Lower Saxony distillery is based on this and comes too close, say the plaintiffs’ attorneys. It’s about warning costs and any liability for damages if the egg enumeration should be seen as reputation exploitation.
The judge is not convinced
But the court didn’t go along with it. According to a preliminary, but rather irrefutable-looking assessment of the Senate, chaired by Judge Erfried Schüttpelz, the gap between the two egg slogans is sufficiently large. After all, the egg is the basis of all eggnog and “no manufacturer can be forbidden to refer to this ingredient”.
The plaintiffs don’t want to dispute that, but normally the ingredients are mentioned in the small print on the back of the bottles. The whole thing is so prominent that it is a “clear reference,” they insist.
In court, it even becomes clear that the Lower Saxony company had also applied for trademark protection for their five eggs, but “failed miserably” before the Federal Patent Court, as they freely admit.
In addition to the commas, the court in Düsseldorf found other differences that indicate a sufficiently large difference between the two advertising appearances: “Eieieiei” is generally an expression of surprise – which is completely missing from the North German egg enumeration.
As a symbol of Easter, the egg cannot be taken by a company either – and after all, the people of Lower Saxony showed a nest full of bottles in their Easter advertising.
“In the overall assessment, we come to the conclusion that we see a difference and a sufficiently large distance,” the Higher Regional Court made it unmistakably clear. The nest of the Bonn liqueur factory will probably remain empty when the verdict is announced on April 27th, which only seems to be a formality.
