Tuesday February 4th, 2020
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A Basque startup makes adults particularly happy with its sweets. The vodka and rum bears are completely unsuitable for children. The mixing of these delights is now bringing the German industry giant Haribo on the scene. The young schnapps candy founders are “scared”.
A Spanish manufacturer sells gummy bears with alcohol – and industry giant Haribo doesn’t find it funny. A legal action has been taken against the Spanish company Ositos, a spokesman for Haribo confirmed. The tipsy bear resembled their own gold bears in appearance. “There is a risk of a misleading connection between our brand and the alcoholic gummy bears.”
The sweets with an alcohol content of 15 percent are sold in small metal cans with a colorful company logo. They come in five colors and flavors: rum pineapple, gin strawberry, vodka orange, whiskey cola and tequila lemon. A glass of wine corresponds to more or less eight “bears with alcohol”, a gin and tonic has as much alcohol as 15 to 17 fruit gums from “Ositos & Co”.
Ositos has customers in the online shop confirm that they are over 18 years old. For Haribo, on the other hand, “childish joy and snacking fun for young and old” is important, the spokesman said. “For us, children and drinking alcohol are fundamentally excluded.”
Ander Méndez, co-founder of Ositos, said he “fell out of the clouds” when he recently received a six-page English-language letter from Haribo lawyers. The letter mentions “a great similarity” between the two sweets and that the Ositos con alcohol (bears with alcohol) are a violation of intellectual property rights.
Haribo demands drastic measures
The company founded in Bonn in December 1920 offers an “amicable settlement”, but demands drastic measures from the Basque young entrepreneurs. The letter asked them to stop producing and selling “each product with the controversial symbol”, to abandon the trademark registered in Spain and to cede “the operation and ownership of the ositosconalcohol.com internet domain” to Haribo.
Méndez and his business partners, 24-year-old Julen Justa and 25-year-old Tamar Gigolashvili, are currently “very carefully” examining how they will respond to the Haribo letter – even if they “do not have enough resources to go to court”. Méndez admits that they are “afraid” of the large family business, which they can “sink if they want to”. At the same time, he assures that he wants to continue producing and selling the “bears with alcohol” because “people like them”.
Haribo took legal action against the Swiss chocolate manufacturer Lindt in 2012. At the time, the stumbling block was a chocolate bear in gold foil, the so-called Lindt teddy, which from Haribo’s perspective violated the registered German word mark “Goldbär”. After three years of litigation, Haribo was finally defeated by the Federal Court of Justice.
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