Nestlé Levels Accusations Against Chinese Soy Sauce Companies in Trademark Infringement Disputes

March 8, 2009
At the beginning of 2009, Nestlé warned Chinese soy sauce businesses of three-dimensional trademark infringement. Nestlé has warned soy sauce companies located in Kaiping City, in Guangdong Province of its plans to involve the entire soy sauce industry in the future. In the Chinese market, a brown square bottle is commonly used in soy sauce packaging. This case is said to be the first three-dimensional trademark infringement case in China.

On October 2008, Nestlé sent two cease and desist letters to two flavoring companies, Master and Emperor; and lodged complaints with the Kaiping Administration of Industry and Commerce against three flavoring companies including Minfeng Company, Weixianghuang Company, and Weixiang Company. Nestlé said that they had the exclusive right on the registered flavor trademark with a registration number of G640537. Nestlé argued that Kaiping’s soy sauce companies infringed its trademark rights by using brown square bottle packaging and asked these companies to stop the infringement and destroy the related products.

In addition to these five companies, there are 28 other soy sauce companies that are using brown square bottle packaging for their products.

　

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