There’s no use crying over spilt oat drink. That is worth remembering if you are a manager at Oatly, which has just lost a trademark battle with a family-run farm.
The Swedish brand, which is the world’s largest oat milk company with a £7.9 billion valuation, has been defeated at the High Court by Glebe Farm Foods of Cambridgeshire. Oatly had accused the company of taking unfair advantage of its trademarks with a gluten-free drink called PureOaty.
Rebecca Rayner, 50, and her brother Philip, 48, run Glebe Farm in the village of Kings Ripton near Huntingdon. They supply gluten-free oats to manufacturers and bakers as well as selling oat milk, although it cannot be described as milk on packaging.
Glebe Farm launched the drink in 2019 and rebranded it PureOaty last year. Lawyers for Oatly alleged five trademark breaches through the name and packaging and accused Glebe Farm of “passing off” their product as Oatly. Some customers promised to boycott Oatly as a result.
Judge Nicholas Caddick QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, ruled that the similarities, such as the carton colour and font, were “at a very general level”. He said it was unlikely that shoppers would believe the milk to be an Oatly product.
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“If Oatly loses sales, then it seems to me that that would be the result of there being a rival oat drink product on the market and not because the attractiveness of its brand as a badge of origin has been in any way diminished by the defendant’s use of the PureOaty sign,” he said.
Glebe Farm said the judgment showed that “corporate might does not make right”, describing the case as a David and Goliath battle.
Philip 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. You only need to look at the two products and packaging side by side to appreciate how different these brands are, and how unnecessary this legal action was.”
He added: “It is enormously gratifying that the judge has ruled in our favour, and to see that smaller independent companies can fight back and win.”
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Oatly will not appeal. A spokeswoman said: “While to some this might be seen as vindication for small oat drink companies over big oat drink companies, we actually never saw it that way.
“For us, this case has always been about protecting our trademark . . . If we were to let one company pass because they, like Glebe Farm, seem to be one of the good guys, that might leave the door open for the bad ones.
“Truth is, we love all oat drink companies and never brought this case to damage Glebe Farm. In fact, we want them to thrive and help bring products into the world that are good for the planet. We just think they should do so in their own unique voice, just like we do.”
