UK high court ruling upholds Cadbury's claims over colour purple

Cadbury is the proud owner of the colour purple, a high court judge in UK has ruled, provided it is wrapped around several blocks of sugar, milk, cocoa and emulsifiers, that is.

The ruling comes as a blow to Nestlé, which argued colours could not be practically trademarked for commercial advantage, but the argument failed to cut ice with high court judge Colin Birss.

Cadbury had been using the specific shade of Pantone 2685C (to be exact) for wrapping its product since the start of the First World War, but Nestle had argued that colours could not be trademarked.

Welcoming the decision to protect the distinctive shade across a range of its milk chocolate, Cadbury press spokesperson Tony Bilsborough said the company's colour purple had been linked with Cadbury for more than a century and the British public had grown up understanding its link with its chocolate.

Nestlé was making a bid to revoke the Intellectual Property Office's (IPO) registration by Cadbury of the purple pantone 2865c as a trademark, arguing that colours could not be trademark protected.

The IPO, in 2011 had accepted that Cadbury showed significant evidence of using the colour on a long-term basis since 1914, however, the colour trademark could not cover chocolate cakes, assortments or confectionery, which meant Nestlé was able to continue using the colour on its Quality Street product.