Iceland is at war again — the British supermarket and the country, that is. Iceland Foods, founded in 1970, has been trying to trademark its name for decades but it has come up against fierce resistance from the country, which fears technicalities might prevent it from calling its own products Icelandic. So once again, the matter has ended up in court.
Iceland and Iceland Foods will battle it out once more, after the supermarket appealed against a European Union ruling made against it in 2019. It means the matter is now before the Grand Board of EU Intellectual Property Office, the trademark authority for the group of 27 nations.
Icelandic lawyers say that losing the appeal would come as a blow for businesses in the country with a population of just 367,000. "It would mean that Icelandic companies could possibly not use the word Iceland in their trademarks to designate the products they’re selling," said Margrét Hjálmarsdóttir, an attorney at the Icelandic Intellectual Property Office.
Iceland Foods first applied to the EU to trademark its name in 2002. At the time, Iceland Foods was owned by an Icelandic retail group Baugur. But due to the 2008 financial crash, the business fell into the hands of the banks.
In 2014, Malcolm Walker, Iceland's founder, took back control of the business and was granted the trademark two years later. The Icelandic government was not happy and tried in vain to settle out of court. The dispute was rekindled when the frozen food seller tried to stop the trademark ‘Inspired by Iceland’ from being branded on groceries in 2015.
This trademark was registered to Íslandsstofa, which the supermarket assumed was a commercial company. But it was the Icelandic government itself. The country’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs had stepped in purportedly to protect Iceland’s national identity.
The country then won a ruling in 2019 that invalidated the exclusivity of Iceland Foods’ EU trademark registration. At the time foreign minister Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson had said: "It goes against common sense that a foreign company could file exclusive rights on the name of a sovereign country. This is a significant victory which means a great deal to Icelandic exporting companies."
A final decision is likely next year. Even then, either party can appeal against the decision again, in which case the matter will go to the Court of Justice of the European Union.
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