Boston, MA 12/19/2013 (wallstreetpr) – The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) is the world’s leading manufacturer and seller of nonalcoholic beverages. The company manufactures a variety of soda, enhanced water, juices and more.
The company has been fighting an intellectual property war over bottle design against Japanese-owned Frucor which bottles and distributes Pepsi.
A case was decided this week and KO lost it in New Zealand. This came just a few days after another U.S. company Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) also lost a trademark battle against a startup company in New Zealand. The startup makes smartphones going by the brand name “driPhone”. Apple lost the case and was asked to pay the cost of the case to the winner.
In the case of KO, the company claimed that Pepsi’s bottle design was too close to its Coke bottles that it could easily create confusion among customers. The specific bottle-design in contention is the 300ml Carolina bottle. The design of this bottle is similar to Coke’s 330ml bottle.
The judge in the case ruled that question of confusion or Pepsi passing itself off as Coke due to the similarity in the bottles could not arise. In this case, the judge ruled in favor of Frucor.
Furthermore, the judge wondered why KO had not brought up the issue before when indeed the controversial bottle has been used by Pepsi since 2005. But Coke issued proceedings in Australia and Germany as some of the countries where it has complained against Carolina bottle.
It also emerged that Frucor had won a bottle design a ward in the UK, a design that included Carolina, without controversy.
Having lost the case, The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE:KO) could be made to cover for the cost of the case. In New Zealand, losers often take the burden of the case by paying the winner.
KO currently trades at around $40 per share and the company is expecting to double its growth by 2020 according to its so-called “2020 Vision.”
