Last Thursday, Nespresso USA sued Peet's coffee, a coffee chain in Southern California, in a federal court in Manhattan, claiming that the coffee capsule design of Peet's coffee infringed Nespresso's trademark right.

Peet's coffee is a coffee baking chain brand in Berkeley, California, USA. since its first store was founded in 1966, the company has grown in size, and now its chain stores have been promoted to all corners of the world.

Founded in 1986 and headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, Nespresso is a subsidiary of Nestle group, a well-known coffee manufacturer, mainly producing capsule coffee and capsule coffee machine. This new coffee machine is mainly used in homes and offices. Although capsule coffee can only be used on the designated capsule coffee machine, it is very popular because it is easy to operate and retains the original flavor of coffee.

However, in recent years, including this case, capsule coffee machine and coffee capsule have caused several patent and trademark disputes.

Nespresso complained in the complaint that the coffee capsules sold by its peer strength Piye company are very similar to Nestle Nespresso's capsules. The upper part is truncated conical, and has the same opaque color and other similar elements, which is enough to confuse and mislead consumers and make them believe that these capsules can be matched with Nestle Nespresso coffee machine, In particular, it is said that Piye coffee also publicizes that its coffee capsule can be compatible with Nespresso coffee machine.

Many online product evaluations mistook Piye coffee capsule for Nespresso coffee capsule, so it can be judged that some customers have been misled.

Nespresso said in the complaint that the federal registered trademark protection applied for includes the capsule design of capsule coffee, so it requested the court to award all the infringement proceeds of Piye coffee to Nespresso, and order Piye coffee to pay three times its monetary compensation.

Its spokesman said that Nespresso spent a lot of time and money for several years to develop this unique design, and Pye coffee still refused to stop the implementation of relevant intellectual property infringement after being informed of the alleged infringement.

Up to now, Piye coffee has refused to respond to the case.

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