NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) - Nestle is rebranding its plant-based patties sold in Europe as the Sensational Burger after a Dutch court granted an injunction filed by Impossible Foods.
The company will no longer use the Incredible Burger brand after the Hague court prohibited its use, citing an infringement on Impossible Foods' Impossible Burger trademark. Nestle will appeal against the verdict, the Swiss food giant said.
"We are disappointed by this provisional ruling as it is our belief that anyone should be able to use descriptive terms such as 'incredible' that explain the qualities of a product," the company said in an e-mailed statement on Monday (June 1). The Sensational name will be applied to all products that used Incredible before.
The ruling marks a victory for startup Impossible Foods, which has yet to enter the European market. The US-based company filed an application with the European authorities at the end of last year to market its Impossible Burger, which contains soya leghemoglobin, the iron-containing molecule made with a genetically engineered yeast. Genetically modified foods and labeling are tightly regulated in the EU, meaning the approval process is expected to be lengthy.
If successful, Impossible Foods will join an increasingly crowded faux meat market in Europe, where rival Beyond Meat has already made inroads in supermarkets.
The Dutch court ruled that Nestle deliberately attempted to confuse consumers into buying its product by imitating Impossible Foods' name, branding and visual identity. If Nestle fails to remove the infringing branding from the European market within four weeks, each of 10 separate subsidiaries involved in the case would be subject to penalties.
"This injunction from The Hague is a major victory - it's a real David v. Goliath episode against the largest food company in the world, which was attempting to confuse consumers with an inferior attempt at a knock-off," Ms Rachel Konrad, a spokesman for Impossible Foods, said by e-mail. "The branding, description, marketing, the name itself - just shameful."
