The UK’s highest court has sided with the dairy industry in the long-running row
Archived version: https://archive.is/newest/https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/oatly-milk-trademark-supreme-court-b2918307.html
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Mmmm… Oat Juice 🤤
The title of the article is misleading. The ruling was on the use of “Post Milk Generation” as a trade mark for use in their advertising and on their products. It has nothing to do with using “milk” to describe their drinks.
Sadly, every comment in this thread seems to be responding to the title at face value, not the actual court case.
I think it’s a bit silly to prevent the trademark of that slogan, but I’m guessing that’s because I’m missing something in the nuance of what a trade mark is, legally, in the UK?
Speculating here with an example of a trademark I know a little bit about: “Grill & Chill” was trademarked by DQ in several jurisdictions. (Aside: and they used that trademark to threaten the “Chill & Grill” restaurant to change its name, despite that use clearly predating DQ’s use of the name by decades, but I digress…) I suppose that’s allowed because “grilling” is directly related to the “trade” of DQ’s services, but something ephemeral like “being a post milk person” is only indirectly related to their “trade” of making non-dairy beverages?
I suppose that makes sense. But still silly, imho.
Its legal team contended that the trademark explicitly conveyed the absence of dairy milk in its offerings.
Conversely, lawyers for Dairy UK argued that the phrase failed to clarify the product’s milk-free nature, instead referring to a specific demographic of consumers.
You can’t not link it to “milk” directly as that was part of the legal argument.
???
I don’t understand what you’re trying to say.
The Supreme Court decision was banning their use of the trademarked phrase. As far as I can tell, that’s it. If you can find something in there that contradicts that, I’m all ears. But nothing in the linked article, aside from the terrible headline, says anything about a court ruling on the term “oat milk”.
Unless I missed something, this has no far-reaching consequences and is mostly a nothing burger.
Is this about oat milk, the thing we all know isn’t goat milk or soy milk or camel milk or cow milk or almond milk or any other thing than oat milk?
This has the same energy as credit unions being banned from using the word ‘bank’ as a descriptor.
I wonder if Westeros would have ruled against the name “Milk of the poppy.” No? The UK officially has worse takes on law than The Seven Fucking Kingdoms.
Capitalism lol
People who impregnate (rape) and abuse cows for their milk are so insecure about their product that they need to ban competition from using its word. It’s really pathetic to see.
no one is raping cows
You do know how we get cows to produce milk right?
yes
The dairy production industry is particularly odious because its traditional production is relatively innocuous (oh, we just kept milking the cow after it gave birth naturally) but its industrial counterpart is so deeply awful, and they’ll choose whichever presentation is most persuasive in any given discussion.
I take it you like eating meat?
Fuck no
I’ll have a latte with soy effluent, please.
Just at “alternative” in tiny letters under each “milk” word.
Man, I know it’s typical and passé to pass on things with complex names, but it may have been a poor move. Imagine if people stayed away from “dihydrogen monoxide” bottles because they sound like chemically treated poison.
Next up, no more hot dogs that don’t contain dog. No hamburgers that don’t contain ham.
It’s only called Hamburger if it comes from the small town of Hamburg, Germany. Otherwise you must call it reformed organ patty. Ti’s the law.
I agree with this, even though milk doesn’t exclusively mean dairy. A milk is the result of the process of milking, where a liquid is excreted from a host, like an animal or plant. Oat milk is oats in suspension; the oat does not remain after it has been milked like an animal or flower. I think technically I’d call it a slurry, but I’m ready for a neologism if anyone has one.
Almond milk has been called ‘milk’ since it was first written about in the 13th century.
There is no logical reason people need the distinction made clearer 800 years later.
How many writers described her skin as milky white? Burn the books!
You don’t think anything at all changed experientially when almond milk was first brought to market in 1998?
What do you think changed?
From my perspective, people made this and used this in their own homes. It was in cookbooks. Being able to buy it in a store doesn’t change the context of 800+ years of history.
For me, home production for personal use is different than commercial production because you don’t see the product under production. When you take something to market, the consumer no longer has any relation to the production process — they never looked at the cookbook, or saw an almond. You’re exposing whole classes of people to something that they do not have the kind of intimate experience with a food you’re describing. Instead, almond milk is the result of some mysterious industrial process, rather than something that comes from a cheesecloth in your kitchen. I think, experientially, buying a carton of almond milk at a store is very different than making it at home.
But in what way does that change the meaning of the established linguistics? That’s the part I’m struggling to grasp. I understand the commercial milk producers wanting to muddy the waters from a competitive perspective, but why should you or I want almond milk, or other plant based milks, called something not ‘milk’?
Because for many people, an alt milk is a new product — even if a product has existed for hundreds of years, you may be one of today’s lucky 10,000. It doesn’t much matter how long dolmas, or samosas, or arepas, or lumpia have existed, if you’ve never encountered it. What you and I, who are familiar with the production of alt milks, call them informally amongst ourselves is not what is at issue. I just don’t think it’s unreasonable to say that the word “milk” has a formal, legal definition, and that alt milks don’t fulfill it. I would take objection to courts saying that latex isn’t milk, for instance, because to my mind, the product of p somniferum is produced using a milking process, while an almond milk is an emulsion.
Hmm. I’m afraid this is where we’re going to disagree. I don’t agree milk needs a legal definition. I don’t agree that consumers need protection from the word ‘milk’ being attached to other products, especially plant based milks that are generally clearly labeled and have hundreds or more years of context in our language.
Hell. There’s ‘human milk’, ‘goat milk’, ‘yak milk’, etc.
If something needs to change, it should be that we need to now call it ‘cow milk’ and truly protect the consumer from confusion.
Unless you’re drinking milk from the cow’s tit, your milk is very mucg an industrial product to make it shelf stable and consistent. People have a totally wrong idea of what real milk feels or tastes like or what’s involved in its production. At least oat milk is literally just filtered porridge you can make at home.
Absolutely! I am not pro-dairy; its production is definitely an immoral practice. I am not in favor of this decision because it is pro-dairy, but because it is pro-consumer. For me, the consumer protections that prevent me from buying vegan cheese when I mean to buy dairy cheese are the same consumer protections that prevent me from buying cheez-whiz when I mean to buy dairy cheese. The consumer protections that allow people to make informed decisions that I find morally reprehensible are the same consumer protections that allow me to make informed decisions that I find morally superior. I like this decision because I feel like I won, even though the evil dairies also won.
Peanut butter isn’t butter, but it’s called that because enough people agreed to call it so. It’s a useful way to referring to something that has similar properties. Likewise, if I ask for a coffee I’ll continue to ask for oat milk and not ‘oat drink’ as the latter sounds stupid.
Oat drink definitely does sound stupid, and I think oat milk will probably stay in the dialect, but have you considered we could come up with a cool cyberpunk name like “spod” or something?
I don’t think there’s any need to come up with a better name if we have one that works perfectly well already. Maybe I’d be ok with something else, provided it was cooler than ‘spod’ :p
Oat Splooge.
Also an emission and not an emulsion 😉
No, I want to overthrow cow milk and destroy that industry. So I call all milks “milk” except cow milk, which I call cow juice.
My primary complaint about this is that it is needlessly confusing for juice consumers, since if you juice a cow you get blood, and not milk.
A milk is the result of the process of milking
It can produce other fluids as well.
For sure, but does it make sense to call something a milk if you can’t milk something to produce it? Doesn’t milk of magnesium just feel weird? You can’t milk a magnesium.
I was being facetious, but I actually get your point now - and yeah, I agree.
I am never more serious than when I am joking
eu
