A row over a copycat product in Lidl or Aldi is always juicy, but nothing new. What’s interesting about the row that erupted last week over Lidl’s Little Moons ‘dupe’ is that it would be a stretch to call it a ‘copy’, at least based on the packaging design.
The two products appeared together in a poster in Lidl stores making a price comparison – Lidl’s own-label Gelatelli Mochi was pitched against the price of Little Moons in Tesco.
“In the words of L’Oréal… because we’re worth it,” quipped Little Moons CEO Joanna Allen in response.
A Tesco spokesperson also hit back at Lidl, saying there was “no need to settle for a dupe” when Little Moons was almost as cheap as the discounter’s version, once Clubcard Prices had been factored in.
Caterpillar cakes, clones and court cases
But if Lidl’s version is a dupe, it is one that appears to have adopted relatively little in the way of design cues from Little Moons. There are no common colour choices in the packaging of the two, and even the orientation of the design is different – Lidl’s is landscape while Little Moons’ is portrait.
Compare with some of the clones Lidl and Aldi have come out with previously, which look so similar to the original it’s still a mystery how they got away with it. And of course, they haven’t always.
Lidl ran into trouble in 2021 when a court ordered it to temporarily withdraw its Hampstead gin from stores across Scotland following a challenge from Hendrick’s. M&S successfully sued Aldi in 2023 for infringing its registered designs with a range of gin-based liqueurs.
And who could forget the high drama of ‘caterpillargate’, when M&S first sued Aldi, culminating in a confidential out-of-court agreement. The case pitched M&S’s Colin the Caterpillar Cake against Aldi’s Cuthbert, quite literally as it turned out, with the two characters eventually coming to blows in an ad campaign from Aldi.
Aldi even redesigned the packaging of its Italian-style chicken sausages way back in 2019 after Heck owner Andrew Keeble accused it of mimicking the brand’s Chicken Italia sausages.
In other cases, brands have stopped short of the courts but publicly called out the supermarket instead, as we saw when Tony’s Chocolonely challenged Lidl last year over its chocolate bar with irregularly shaped sections. Tony’s took the opportunity to also suggest the retailer should copy its ethical standards by signing up to the brand’s five sourcing principles.
Changing the landscape
There are plenty more we won’t hear about at all, because the brand may be stocked by the discounter, and so choose not to risk the commercial relationship with a public fallout. As it happens, Little Moons is “regularly” sold in Lidl, according to Allen.
Perhaps the most noteworthy case in this context is Aldi v Thatchers cider, which Aldi lost in the Court of Appeal last year. The court found Aldi’s Taurus Cloudy lemon cider had been ‘riding on the coat-tails’ of the brand’s Cloudy Lemon Cider and taking ‘unfair advantage’ of its trademark. What made this case significant was that the ‘unfair advantage’ argument does not require establishing customers could be confused about what they are buying, making it more difficult to wriggle out of.
Before the verdict was delivered, some intellectual property lawyers speculated that the discounters might have to rethink their mimicry, or least take a more subtle approach, in the event Thatchers won.
After the victory, Thatchers lawyer Thomas Chartres-Moore, head of intellectual property at Stephens Scown, also said it would make it harder for Aldi – and we can presume by logical extension Lidl – to make own-label products that closely mimic an individual leading brand. “This changes the landscape,” he said at the time.
So, could the fact Lidl’s Gelatelli Mochi doesn’t actually look like Little Moons be a sign of that shift, and the rethinking that has gone on behind the scenes?
After all, the whole point of design mimicking is to send a clear signal to consumers which leading brand they are being offered a cheaper alternative to. If you can no longer do that with lookalike packaging, what’s another good way? Perhaps a big price comparison poster in stores?
2 Readers' comments