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.
