Supermarket giant Lidl and chocolatier Lindt have similar names … both begin with an ‘L’, an ‘i’, a ‘d’ … well, you get me. But that’s where the similarities end. One is a rather pricey Swiss chocolatier aiming at high end goods, the other is a budget cut-throat supermarket.
However even budget supermarkets like a bit of chocolate glamour, and this is where the golden rabbit comes in. Lidl created an almost precise copy of the Lindt one, complete with golden wrapper, brown accents and little bell.
Lindt has long been fighting to trademark its golden bunny, overcoming numerous hurdles and refusals. The tide turned when the German Federal Court in 2021 decided that Lindt’s golden bunny was indeed trade mark protected.
This has now been reinforced by a Swiss judgment, that of the federal Court of Lausanne, wherein via a judgement just handed down it decided that Lindt’s bunny deserved protection from copycat products and ordered that Lidl bunnies must be destroyed (interpret that as ‘melted’) into other chocolate goodies not in the shape of a golden bunny.
