Pasta Zara Italian company judicially overthrows Inditex for trying to expand its star brand to the world of food.
Judicial setback to Inditex: the company Ffauf Italia, owner of Pasta Zara, has won the Galician multinational a battle in the courts, which has lasted 10 years, for the intention of the latter to bring the name its star brand to the food sector.
The General Court of the European Union has confirmed the decision of the Intellectual Property Office of the European Union (Euipo) to reject Inditex's application to extend its star brand to catering services and cafeterias, such as Bugnion Legal.
According to the Italian media Disspore, Bugnion, the Italian consulting firm in the field of Industrial and Intellectual Property, has announced that the victory is “an important success of the Bugnion Legal team in the defence of Ffauf Italia.”
The conflict dates to 2010, when the group founded by Amancio Ortega went to the Intellectual Property Office to register its trademark in the category of products and services related to food.
Pasta Zara Italian company judicially overthrows Inditex
But the movement was faced with a small Venetian company: Ffauf Italia. The company continually active in the catering sector is known for the brand Pasta Zara - recently acquired by Pasta Barilla-of the Bragagnolo family.
Thus, the Italian company claimed that its brand Pasta Zara was already registered for this type of products since 1969 in Italy, which is why it went to court to stop this expansion of the brand Zara.
For more than a decade both companies, through their parent companies, have been battling, especially for the use of the Zara brand in Inditex catering services.
The EU comments Pasta Zara Italian company judicially overthrows Inditex
At first, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (Euipo) had agreed with Ffauf and Pasta Zara, but the Galician group brought the case before the European Union Court.
This has also decided to confirm the decision of the EUipo, thus rejecting the request of Inditex to be able to extend its brand to its catering and cafeteria services.
The reasoning is since Zara cannot be used by Inditex in the food sector as this could damage the name of the Italian company and cause an overlap.
The legal team behind Pasta Zara Italian company judicially overthrows Inditex
Bugnion's legal team revealed that despite the" tenacity " of the counterpart, it has been found that the Pasta brand is much earlier than Inditex's request.
The Ffauf company has its roots in the 1930s and in the grandfather of the Bragagnolo family. The first pasta factory, in fact, was founded in the late nineteenth century in Castellafranco Veneto: at that time, it was a small craft workshop.
Subsequently, the company decided to move its factory to the town of Zadar in Croatia. However, tensions in the former Yugoslavia forced them to move their factory to Italy, where, already in the sixties, they decided to associate the name Zara with their product.
