AU: Seven Fields pleased with package protection ruling

Seven Fields has taken Federal Court action to protect its Sweet Cheeks mango brand Australian mango and citrus grower Seven Fields has successfully shut down the unauthorised use of a mango carton by another mango supplier. Seven Fields argued the offending carton was deceptively similar to the carton that bears its successful Sweet Cheeks brand.

Seven Fields says that, despite attempts to speak to the alleged offender, it was forced to issue proceedings in the Federal Court in October in order to protect the Sweet Cheeks trademark that has developed a strong market following in recent years. In its application material, Seven Fields argued the offending carton used the same design, colour scheme and type face so that a customer looking at the carton in the market could easily confuse the copied carton with the genuine Sweet Cheeks product.

“Seven Fields invests substantially in its quality control and supply chain in order to deliver the highest quality mangoes to the Australian market”, said Greg McMahon, managing director of Seven Fields. “We are concerned to ensure that our customers are not confused by other mango suppliers whose packaging, whether deliberately or otherwise, appears to look like the genuine Sweet Cheeks article.”

The matter did not make it to a hearing before a judge as the offending supplier agreed to immediately cease using any of the packaging and also to pay costs to Seven Fields. Mr McMahon said that while he was happy the matter had been settled wholly in favour of Seven Fields, he was disappointed that supplier did not respond to earlier attempts made to deal with the problem before lawyers became involved.

“We always prefer to deal with these sorts of things in an amicable fashion, but in this case we couldn’t get the supplier to return our calls or respond to our correspondence. Issuing the legal proceedings was a last resort but something we did not hesitate to do in order to protect the integrity of the Sweet Cheeks brand.”

For more information:
Greg McMahon
Tel: +61 (0)419 831 899