Smell-Alikes Cannot Say What They Smell Like!

The Court of Appeal has issued its ruling in an interesting intellectual property (IP) case, involving copycat scents, which follows recent European rulings.

The case was brought by l’Oréal and other makers of luxury perfumes. They took exception to a business publishing a table showing its own brands and which luxury brands they resembled. Although the packaging of the ‘smell-alikes’ was also similar, the Court considered that this was unlikely to mislead the public so did not infringe the manufacturers’ trade marks.

However, the use of the perfume makers’ trade marks for marketing purposes to identify which ‘own brands’ had a similar fragrance was a breach of the IP of the claimants.

The ‘smell-alikes’ can continue to be sold but their manufacturers cannot say what fragrances their products are supposed to imitate.