Even worse: Migros loses trademark dispute against US giant Target

Migros, in particular, was disturbed by Target registering the Good & Gather food brand in Switzerland. According to Migros, the logo contains a lowercase letter “g”, which was unusually similar to the lowercase “g” of Migrolino’s new trading format, Gooods. The orange giant then broke through the barricades and demanded that the US giant cancel the trademark of various foods and beverages.

The surprising thing is: Why is there so much fuss over a lowercase “g”? Why attack a rival in Switzerland that is not active and is unlikely to ever be active? Migros says, “An objection was made against the dilution of our G brand.”

Two leaves opposite graphic ellipse

As is usual in such trademark disputes, this dispute became a case of the Swiss Federal Institute for Intellectual Property (IGE). In this case, it was clear that Migros should pay attention to the leaves coming out of the letter “g” as well as the same letter.

This is also because, as the IGE notes, “individual letters are essentially unregistrable because of their vulgarity, lacking any concrete distinctiveness.” The mark derives its distinctiveness solely from the aforementioned graphic design of two leaf-shaped letters almost growing from the letter at the top right.

A pass to Migros defended the following claim: In the controversial brand, the design of the dominant lowercase letter “g” is also characterized by the leaf element growing practically in the upper right. IGE certainly noticed this smallness, took a closer look at the two plants and saw the distinction: “two leaves and a graphic ellipse”.

The US giant, however, took aim at the increasingly blamed lowercase letter, defending itself by saying Target’s “g” was displayed in a “broken font with spaces” and also had different rounding rates.

IGE: No risk of confusion

IGE, in its opinion, is biased towards Target from Migros: the character similarity is due only to the similarity of the characters in the lowercase letter “g”; “Otherwise the comparison symbols differ enough.” Or in short: Gooods works with two pages, Good & Gather works with ellipses; This should be enough to distinguish them. Migros’s objection was therefore rejected.

That’s a different story, of course: Since Migros does most of its business in Switzerland, where Target has yet to set foot, the two brands will probably never be able to compete with each other.

The orange giant acts like a good loser and decides to take the Double-G case to the next higher authority, St. Gallen does not want to allow the appeal to the Federal Administrative Court: “The IGE refused and we took this into account. “We will not proceed based on the decision.”