With an interesting decision issued on June 14, 2017, the EU
Court of Justice basically declared that the commercial
denomination of vegetarian or vegan products cannot contain words
such as "milk", "butter", cheese",
etc.
The case brought before the Court concerned a German Company
specialized in the production and sale of purely-vegetable/vegan
products named "tofu butter", "vegetable
cheese", "cream" etc.
A German association engaged against unfair competition
practices ("VSW") challenged those
product denominations on the grounds that they were in breach of
anti-unfair competition provisions – thus unfairly damaging
the interests of dairy industry operators.
The German Company – on the other hand – claimed
that (i) consumer – since some time – already developed
a new way to perceive terms such as "butter",
"cheese", "milk", etc..; on the other hand (ii)
those terms are always used jointly with adjectives such as
"vegetal", "tofu", "rice" which
therefore
