Marks & Spencer has stopped selling a t-shirt with a craft beer logo after a pubs group accused it of 'ripping off' its brand.
The Craft Beer Co pointed out the use of its name in a tweet on Thursday, following which the giant retailer said it would remove the offending item while it investigated.
Hey @marksandspencer what’s the idea with these T shirts!?
Can we expect a royalties cheque in the post!?
Surely one Iconic British Institution shouldn’t be ripping off another…!!? ???? pic.twitter.com/LYjZ337Wnq
— The Craft Beer Co. (@thecraftbeerco) April 12, 2023
Embarrassingly for M&S, the row comes after locking horns with discount rivals Aldi and Lidl over their alleged copying of products such as chocolate cake Colin The Caterpillar.
In February, M&S won a 12-month legal battle with Aldi about copyright infringement on gin bottles with LED lights. That followed a writ against Aldi in 2021 over its chocolate cake 'Cuthbert' in what was dubbed the 'The caterpillar wars'.
Aldi could barely contain its glee after M&S climbed down, posting its own tweet in response.
OH HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED https://t.co/rXHNBQ9qVX
— Aldi Stores UK (@AldiUK) April 13, 2023
Martin Hayes, the founder of Craft Beer Co, which has eight pubs in London and the south, told the Telegraph he wasn’t angry with M&S but noted: “They're the people that made such a big thing out of Colin the Caterpillar cakes, which is quite funny."
"I'm sure it's a genuine sort of mistake of some description,” he said before quipping that the t-shirt design was “terrible”.
Craft Beer added that a punter at one of its pubs had pointed out the t-shirt on Wednesday.
An M&S spokesman said: ‘We take intellectual property very seriously and, while the t-shirt was designed in good faith, we’ve taken the decision to remove the product from sale so we can investigate further.”
The use or misuse of logos has become an increasingly fractious and litigious area in recent years.
Last year, Lidl took umbrage at Tesco’s use of a yellow circle in a promotion, which it said was too similar to its own.
Adidas, meanwhile, made a swift U-turn in March after a complaint to the US trademark office about the use of a three-stripe mark by the Black Lives Matter movement.
It dropped the complaint a day after it became public knowledge and was widely reported.