Coca-Cola has lost its legal battle of the bottle against Pepsi over the shape of their soft drink containers.
Coca-Cola took Pepsi and its New Zealand manufacturer Frucor to court to stop it using bottles which Coca-Cola said were too similar to its historic "contour bottle", breaching trademarks and potentially confusing customers.
But Justice Edwin Wylie has ruled, after a hearing in the High Court in Auckland, that there are enough differences between the bottles to prevent any reasonable likelihood of confusion.
He said that while the bottles were undoubtedly similar, there were significant differences in the shapes, and that Pepsi's Carolina bottle had an embossed horizontal wave pattern in its bottom section.
In addition, the Pepsi, Pepsi Max and 7Up signs were a prominent feature, clearly distinguishing the bottles from Coca-Cola's.
Justice Wylie also ruled there was no reasonable likelihood people would buy the Pepsi products thinking they were Coca-Cola items because of the shape of the bottle.
Consequently, there was no breach of the Fair Trading Act, he said.
"There is no evidence of any person being misled or deceived in the four years that the products have been available side-by-side in the market place," he said.
