The Mars candy company brought M&M's to Sweden in 2009. But the country already had a famous chocolate candy marked with an M — and now a court says M&M's should melt from the market, owing to a trademark infringement.
The case pitted Mars against Mondelez International, which uses its Marabou label to sell M-marked chocolates that it calls Sweden's "all-time favorite."
Mars Nordic's corporate affairs director, Ylva Freiesleben, tells NPR, "we have always believed no confusion exists between the colorful m&m's brand — one of the world's favorite chocolate products — and the Marabou M Peanut Brand."
But the Svea Court of Appeal did not agree, issuing a ruling in which it said that the two brands were confusingly similar. The court also laid out potential penalties if Mars attempts to keep selling M&M's in Sweden.
From Swedish news site The Local comes this back story on the two companies' relationship:
"Mondelez, which owns famous Swedish chocolate brand Marabou, launched the M sweets in Sweden in the 1950s in partnership with Mars, who had already sold M&M's in other countries."An agreement reached between the two companies in 1989 said that Mars would not sell M&M's in Sweden, Norway and Finland. The agreement expired in 1998 and was not extended, and in 2009 Mars introduced M&M's in Sweden."
While the name Mondelez might seem foreign to many American consumers, they certainly know the company's brands, which range from Nabisco and Cadbury to Oreo and Trident. If you need a final hint: Up until 2012, the company was known as Kraft; that's the year it was spun off from the Kraft Foods Group.
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