London — The four-finger KitKat isn’t a distinctive enough shape to warrant a trademark, UK Court of Appeal judges said on Wednesday, marking a fourth unsuccessful attempt by owner Nestlé to protect the famous chocolate bar. The decision follows two British rulings and a European judgment in the decade-long efforts to trademark the famous chocolate bar. Mondelez International’s unit Cadbury UK challenged the latest appeal. The EU General Court ruled in December that the chocolate didn’t meet the bar required to deserve a EU-wide trademark protection. Three appeal judges agreed with lower courts that the evidence didn’t go "as far as to show that the consumer would perceive the bars in the basket as originating from Nestlé and not from others", they said in the ruling. "The distinction may be highly technical, but it is important, because of the nature of the trademark, which gives the trader a monopoly for all time." KitKat was first sold in the UK in 1935 by Rowntree, with the shap...
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