The Chocolate Bar Copyright Dept.,
MARS Confectionery,
Slough,
SL1 4JX.
10th May, 1990.
Dear Sir,
Now here's a thing: I popped into my local newsagents this afternoon for the usual Thursday treat of an Independent and a Marathon bar and was surprised to be offered a "Snickers" bar instead of the latter.
This Snickers bar (wrapper enclosed) bore more than a passing resemblance to your own Marathon bars. In fact, they even have the audacity to use the motto "THE NEW NAME FOR MARATHON"!
Now I'm no expert on legal matters, but I reckon you'd be able to beat these crooks hands-down in a court of law. Why don't you sue? I don't know if you can patent the "look and feel" of a chocolate bar, but what about the wrapper? As you can see, Snickers have used the same colour scheme as Marathon and have even gone so far as to contrive a (rather silly) name with the same number of letters as "Marathon" (8) so that they could use the same size lettering.
The product itself, although obviously a blatant copy of your own, was clearly of an inferior quality - due to cheaper ingredients, I expect. My newsagent was keen to persuade me that a Snickers is every bit as good as a Marathon, but he couldn't pull the wool over my eyes. I certainly will not be wasting any more of my hard-earned money on that rubbish!
I realise that you probably have a number of product research people out there on the street, so these Snickers interlopers may well have been brought to your attention already. If not, I recommend that you nip this thing in the bud as soon as possible - already, my own newsagent no longer stocks Marathons: carry on at this rate and it won't be long before Marathons aren't on sale anywhere. And then what next? "Jupiter" bars, I suppose!
If you should decided to pursue this through the courts and are looking for a reliable independent witness, I'm your man. I can also recommend the name of an excellent law firm in the City.
Give them hell!
Yours sincerely,