Welsh dairy coop blocks ‘Red Dragon’ trademark
A Welsh dairy farmers’ cooperative has scored a victory in a dispute over trademark rights for the popular Welsh cheese ‘Red Dragon’.
Red Dragon is a wax-coated version of a cheese known locally as Y Fenni, a cheddar cheese blended with mustard and ale. It takes its Welsh name from the town of Abergavenny in the south-east of the country.
Abergavenny Fine Foods, a local dairy manufacturer, applied to register a logo for ‘Red Dragon’ as a UK trademark in 2018. The application was jointly filed alongside English cheese exporter Somerdale International, and consisted of a red and black shield divided into four main parts with a set of borders.
The exporter sells ‘Somerdale Red Dragon’ cheese on its website, describing it as “English cheddar cheese with wholegrain mustard and ale”.
The Somerdale mark would have granted the exporter and Abergavenny exclusive rights for the brand for “cheese all being handmade in Great Britain”.
The application was opposed by South Caernarfon Creameries, an association of Welsh dairy farmers and manufacturers.
The coop sells dairy products including cheese and butter under the ‘Dragon’ brand throughout Wales, and owns two ‘Dragon’ trademarks covering milk and milk products in class 29.
In its decision, the UK Intellectual Property Office (IPO) said that there was a likelihood that consumers would indirectly mistake the applied-for Red Dragon logo for the coop’s brand.
That’s because, despite the fact that the Somerdale mark is a complex logo with several different parts, consumers were most likely to focus on ‘Red Dragon’ as the dominant element.
“In my experience, cheese is often sold in a range of colours and styles, often denoting different flavours or varieties provided by the same maker,” the IPO examiner wrote, adding: “The change from a Dragon cheese to a Red Dragon cheese is entirely in keeping with a brand extension of this type.”
The applicants had argued that its logo would be set apart by the “medieval imagery” on the shield, which they said evoked medieval England.
“There is no evidence before me to suggest that imagery of the type included in the application would, to average consumers, indicate medieval England, as opposed to any other country,” the IPO examiner replied.
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