On Thursday, April 15th, English supermarket chain Marks & Spencer launched intellectual property theft legal proceedings against rival Aldi Uk. At the center of the dispute is the “Colin Caterpillar”, a caterpillar-wrapped cake, which, according to allegations, Aldi was copying. What is Collin Grub?
It is a sponge roll cake covered with dark chocolate and chocolate praline, and the face and legs are made of white chocolate. Marks & Spencer has been selling it since 1990, although it has been modified several times over the years. Over the years the brand has expanded: “Connie,” “Colin’s friend,” is served as a cake in a bowl. Effective and delicious, Colin is one of Marks & Spencer’s best-selling products, so much so that according to The Guardian, more than 15,000 weeks were sold in Spring 2020.
I saw people asking why Embed a Tweet They are after Cuthbert and not other donuts, so I made a Caterpillar collage to spot the differences. pic.twitter.com/Pvnac1if57
PrimaryCoHead (PrimaryCoHead) April 15, 2021
So it is not by chance that at all this time other British chains have tried to emulate their success. And this is how “Clyde the Caterpillar” appeared on the shelves of Asda. Tesco suggested “Curly the Caterpillar” and “Wiggles the Caterpillar” by Sainsbury. Morrison started selling Caterpillar Morris. Then Waitrose’s “Cecil the Caterpillar” and “Charlie the Caterpillar” (no relation to Coop) appeared. However, despite all this “salutation” very similar to the original, Marx and Spencer never raised his finger until Aldi Uk suggested “Cuthbert the Caterpillar”.
This time, however, the chain’s legal team moved on and filed a lawsuit against the AldiUk chain in the Supreme Court for intellectual property infringement. The reason is that this time the cake is very similar compared to its predecessors. Marks & Spencer accuses Aldi of wanting to ride the success of “Colin” with a nearly identical, less expensive product (“Colin” costs 7 pounds, “Cuthbert” costs 5), but of poor quality. So the chain expects the competitor to pull Caterpillar out of sale and never offer something similar again. A spokesperson for the chain told the BBC: “Because we know how important the Marks and Spencer brand is to our customers and just how much they expect from us,” “we want to protect Coleen, Coney and our reputation for freshness, quality, innovation and value.”
In response, Aldi Uk’s social team launched a #FreeCuthbert campaign on Twitter, stating that “Cuthbert was found guilty … of being delicious” and also saying, “We will be” Colin “or lawyers (a pun based on coincidences between the English pronouncement of a word” calling and Colin. ”In response, the hashtag #SaveColin was also fired.
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