Three and a half coffee wins the plagiarism! Original protection of instant coffee brand packaging design

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Recently, some domestic media reported that it took 20 months for three and a half meals to sue the coffee brand named "Colorful Mystery" because it used the appearance similar to three and a half small cups of instant coffee without authorization, which constituted unfair competition.

Finally, the brand party of "Colorful Mystery" was sentenced by Zhejiang Province Hangzhou City Intermediate People's Court to compensate three and a half tons of economic losses and reasonable expenses of 1.73 million yuan, and stopped producing and selling infringing products.

I believe many friends know three and a half meals because they are attracted by the shape of the brand product ~ super instant coffee + simple style packaging +mini coffee cup shape + color brought visual impact. At the time of launch, it was immediately welcomed by young consumers.

Because of the novel shape, environmentally friendly material coffee packaging comes with "Come on! The aura of "keep me DIY" attracted consumers to keep the packaging for DIY transformation, make a variety of small potted plants, small pendant decorations, etc., and share them on major social platforms, thus attracting more young users to pay attention to brand products.

Since its launch, three and a half meals have swept social media with a high "film rate", and more and more coffee brands have also launched similar styles of product packaging. In recent years, the product modeling of small cups has never been discussed, analyzed, imitated or even copied in the industry.

And there are so many brands with similar product models, why three and a half times to sue a brand that is not well known? Because it's not just borrowing anymore.

According to the infringement evidence provided by Sandun and a half to the media, it can be seen that the Qicai Mystery brand has great similarity with Sandun and a half products in terms of product style, packaging design, publicity pictures and content.

The keyword "three and a half of the same model" has also been added to the product search term, so that users can also see the brand's products when searching for three and a half times, and because the style and product appearance are similar, misleading information is conveyed to confuse consumers.

Therefore, from December 29,2020, three and a half days began to defend the rights of the colorful mystery lawsuit, until September 2 this year the case has a final judgment.

Because there is no definition of plagiarism and imitation in law, when many brands of original products have similar products of other brands, more often because of the long time and high cost of rights protection, the awareness and atmosphere of intellectual property protection in the food industry is not strong.

With low cost and large flow, popular product design followed by big brands has become the beginning of many small brands. Whether it is searching for "coffee beans" or "instant coffee"... the design of packaging layout between brands is somewhat similar, and the "assimilation" phenomenon of products in the industry is becoming more and more serious.

Directly copying the main elements is called plagiarism, analyzing the main elements and then focusing on flexible application is called reference. Because of more and more such phenomena, people's definitions of plagiarism and reference are becoming more and more vague, which also makes it more and more difficult to protect the rights of originality.

Therefore, when a design is really 100% original, what the designer needs to do is to apply for copyright/patent/trademark exclusive right of the design, and put it into use and production at the beginning, so that when necessary, it can directly protect the rights according to intellectual property rights.

If not, and other brand product promotion can indeed confuse consumers, you can protect your rights according to the provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law on "counterfeiting confusion" behavior.

There have also been similar cases before, that is, at the end of last year on the hot search tea color happy color to tea color observation case.

In the face of plagiarism and unfair competition, the original creator/brand should not "wait for death", because the more imitation products, the original products themselves will bring word of mouth, consumers on the impact of brand product quality judgment.

Rights protection is a necessary means to protect their own rights and interests, but also to the original supporters, consumers commitment and protection.

Source: Internet, Little Red Book, FBIF Food and Beverage Innovation