An interesting lawsuit about comparative advertisement has come to an end in Ireland. The Irish Supreme Court has ruled in a case between the international supermarket chain Aldi and the local Dunnes Stores.
In 2013, Dunnes launched an advertisement campaign in which they compared products sold by them with such sold by Aldi. Some of the advertisements were: “Dunnes rich and creamy yogurt, 4 x 125g”, bearing the Dunnes price of €1.99 ($2.21) and another sticker indicating that the product was the same price in an Aldi store.
On top of this, they used slogans such as “lower price guarantee” and “always better value”.
Aldi initiated a lawsuit complaining that the advertisement was misleading because the products at hand were with different characteristics.
The Supreme Court dismissed the Aldi’s allegations for most of the products. The Court noted that comparative advertising was permitted under a 2007 statute which implemented the EU’s Directive 2006/114/EC into Irish law as far as it is not misleading.
For two of the products, however, the Court ruled that the comparison wasn’t fair because their characteristics were different. The first one was a toilet paper which haа different length and the second one was a day cream with a different sun protection factor.
Source: WIPR.
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY PLANET 