The ongoing saga of Aldi copycats

The IP world might be boring without Aldi. Its ongoing attempts to toe the line between being close enough to a third-party brand that consumers recognise the brand whilst being far enough away to avoid infringing third party rights has kept IP lawyers intellectually stimulated for years. Every case seems to have its unique challenges as Aldi continues to update its approach, and claimants find ever more complex and sophisticated ways to convince the Courts to scold Aldi for its behaviour.

It looks like 2025 will be no different, Aldi once again finds itself on the receiving end of a claim form. This time, the claim is brought by Robinsons. Full details of the claim are not yet known, but it is understood that Robinsons claims that Aldi’s Sun Quench Squirty Squash product is infringing registered trade marks and unregistered trade marks owned by Robinsons in its mini squash product.

Robinsons mini orange on the go squash

Aldi’s Orange super concentrated squirty squash

The most recent decision against Aldi came as recently as January 2025 and it was a high profile loss for Aldi. You can read our case report on Thatchers v Aldi here, and read about our take on Aldi’s strategy more generally here. The decision of the Court of Appeal in the Thatchers case has likely bolstered trade mark owners and opens the door for a higher chance of success against Aldi if you have the right form of protection in place. The key difference in the Thatchers case, as compared to cases where Aldi has succeeded, seemed to be that Thatchers had a strong portfolio of registered trade mark protection for its packaging. This allowed it to successfully bring a claim of trade mark infringement based on Aldi’s product taking unfair advantage of Thatchers registered trade marks. A quick search of the UK trade mark register shows that Robinsons has adopted the same strategy, and it has a variety of registered rights in the packaging of its mini squash products, as well as various aspects of that packaging which are registered separately to the packaging as a whole. We expect that Robinsons will be paying close attention to the Thatchers decision and carefully tailoring its claim to ensure it can replicate that result.

For the time being, we wait for more information on the claim to be released, but we don’t doubt this case will keep us talking for the next year or two.