Back in 2023, we talked about a strange trademark dispute out of the UK concerning oat-based milk products. Specifically, Oatly, a large producer of oat milk, applied for a trademark in the UK for …
I don’t see the deception. ‘vegan sausage’ ah, it’s a sausage but without meat. ‘vegan burger patty’ ah, it’s a burger patty but without meat. ‘oat milk’ ah, it’s like milk, but made from oat.
It is an easy and accurate way to describe what they are selling - a product intended to replace a specific animal product. No one is going to call a block of tofu a vegan steak - if that’s the name, it will be a product as much like a real stake as the producer can muster.
I don’t see the deception. ‘vegan sausage’ ah, it’s a sausage but without meat. ‘vegan burger patty’ ah, it’s a burger patty but without meat. ‘oat milk’ ah, it’s like milk, but made from oat.
It is an easy and accurate way to describe what they are selling - a product intended to replace a specific animal product. No one is going to call a block of tofu a vegan steak - if that’s the name, it will be a product as much like a real stake as the producer can muster.
Why make things more complicated than they are?