Mondelez International, the company behind Oreo, Wheat Thins and other branded products, said Aldi is copying its packaging in an effort to trick customers into buying products from supermarket chains.
In a federal lawsuit filed in Illinois Tuesday, the snack company claimed Aldi "blatantly copied" its brand's unique packaging to mislead customers into thinking they were buying Mondelez products when they were actually buying a store-branded version. The company is seeking currency losses and a court order that will prevent Aldi from infringing its trademark for the sale of Mondelez's products.
Neither Aldi nor Mondelez responded to a request for comment from CBS News immediately.
Mondelez cited many Aldi products in its lawsuit, calling it the look of its own popular snacks, such as Oreo, Chips Ahoy, Wheat Tinins, Nilla Wafers Cookies and Nabisco Premium Saltine Crackers. The company claims that the Aldi store brand project has different names but contains similar packaging design elements (including fonts, colors, image placement and product names).
For example, Aldi's peanut butter cream biscuits are filled with a red box similar to Mondelez's jam biscuits. The snack company claims that the white script font and cookie images on the packaging also mimic the Nutter Butter packaging.
Aldi also sells a product called Thin Wheat, apart from the almost synonymous name of Nabisco’s wheat primer, which has a design similar to Mondelez’s product, which includes a yellow background, the word “original” and a cookie in the lower half of the box, the lawsuit says.
Trademark lawsuits are not Aldi's first lawsuit, which has been called up several times in terms of packaging of its products. Earlier this year, the British Court of Appeal ruled that Thatchers was a cider company that sued Aldi for design similarities in its lemon cider packaging.
Mondelez is one of the largest multinational food companies in the world, with a footprint in over 150 countries. According to its website, Aldi is a U.S. company that operates 6,600 stores in 10 countries.