Another day, another American company pulls some blatant fuckery involving trademarks and threatened lawsuits with an end goal of limiting the options of American consumers and forcing people to buy their product over a clearly superior alternative. Boy, I’m shocked they keep trying this shit.
This time it’s the Hershey’s corporation, whom you may remember from their support of child slave labor in Africa as recently as early 2014. Using the threat of a massive lawsuit, Hershey’s has succeeded in bullying British chocolate importers, most notably Let’s Buy British Imports, into refusing to import numerous candies, most notably Cadbury bars, under badly-intentioned but probably accurate claims of trademark infringement. See, Hershey’s has (for some inexplicable reason) license to make Cadbury bars in America using an entirely different recipe than its British counterparts, one which resembles a chocolate bar significantly less than it does weasel poop.
Let’s get the obvious out of the way: the law is probably on Hershey’s side here, at least when it comes to Cadbury products (hold that thought until we get to the other blacklisted candies, though); we don’t have a definitive answer for certain, since Let’s Buy British Imports caved under threat of a lawsuit, but we can safely assume that when it comes to Cadbury, they had a solid case. At the same time, if that is true, it’s indicative of just how screwed-up American trademark law really is — it’s true, but it sure as hell isn’t right. Most aspects of the legal system take intent into account, but it’s unclear whether trademark disputes do so. That’s relevant in this case, because Hershey’s claim that the lawsuit is “to prevent consumers from being confused or misled” is a naked lie, and anyone who tries to dispute that is objectively wrong. Hershey’s doesn’t give a shit about the American consumer; if they did, they wouldn’t keep passing off condensed tile grout as chocolate.
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