Utah nutrition company BetterBody Foods & Nutrition LLC claimed that Oatly AB, a Sweedish corporation with locations in Delaware and Utah, participated in unfair competition through infringing its trademark for the word “Oatsome,” which is used on the companies’ non-dairy oat milk.
BetterBody filed a trademark complaint in the Utah District Court on Friday. It claimed that when the company researched what to call its oat milk in 2018, it searched for registered trademarks and found the defendant’s product was marketed under the name “Oat-ly” and “The Original Oat-ly!” BetterBody registered the trademark for Oatsome in multiple countries including the United States.
Later, Oatly began to use the trademark “Totally Oat-Some” on its oat milk, which is a direct competing product to the plaintiff’s Oatsome. Oatly’s milk is sometimes sold alongside the plaintiff’s, including in Utah’s Target locations.
In September 2019, BetterBody received a letter from Oatly alleging that the defendant owned the trademark for Totally Oatsome. The letter asked the plaintiff’s to abandon their application for a trademark and to not use the phrase Oatsome. The plaintiff says it found that Oatly attempted to register the trademark for Oatsome and Totally Oatsome earlier in September, nine months after BetterBody began its application.
“Given that no use of ‘Oatsome’ by Oatly had turned up during BetterBody’s search of the Oatsome mark … BetterBody was surprised at Oatly AB’s claim to own the trademark Totally Oatsome,” the complaint states. It claims that the plaintiff was “taken aback” by Oatly’s request that it not register trademarks incorporating the word “oat” into another word. BetterBody said the trademarks used by Oat-ly were not similar to Oatsome except for the word “oat” at the beginning.
The defendant also allegedly challenged BetterBody’s trademarks in the European Union and China. According to the complaint, it has been using the mark Totally Oatsome in packaging designs since 2016. Oatly began selling milk with the mark in June 2020 at Whole Foods Store, Target, Wegmans, and Amazon.com.
BetterBody, represented by Workman Nydegger, asks for damages and a judgment that the alleged trademark infringement is willful and that the defendant participated in unfair competition.
