Two directors of the Brennans bakery company have denied the company deliberately copied the packaging used in a brown bread product of rival bakers McCambridge’s.
Derek Beatty and Ivan Hammond were giving evidence in the action in which McCambridge’s Ltd are suing Joseph Brennan Bakeries, trading as Brennans, over alleged infringement of its copyright on the packaging of a stone-ground wholewheat bread.
It is claimed Brennans are “passing off” their product as McCambridge’s by putting it into similar packaging to that used by McCambridge’s.
While Brennans is the overall bread market leader in the State, McCambridge’s have a 30 per cent market share in the market for the wholewheat product, while Brennans have 13 per cent, the court heard.
Brennans claims it wanted to increase the sales of its wholewheat product and decided to put it into a new resealable bag because the old packaging tended to tear on opening.
The company said it got three designers to present new packaging ideas before choosing one of those to relaunch the product on a limited basis last January before going nationwide to over 3,000 stores in April.
McCambridge’s, which pioneered the use of resealeable packaging for bread here, claims its bread has been sold in distinctive packaging throughout its history with the current packaging in use since early 2008. About 25 million loaves were sold between 2008 and 2010 in the new packaging, and sales revenue over those years was in excess of €22 million.
Michael McCambridge, chairman of McCambridge’s, told the court last week his concern was that people who normally buy their bread would be confused by the Brennans packaging and buy the rival product by mistake. He was also concerned new customers would choose the Brennans product thinking it was McCambridge’s.
Today, Derek Beatty, who has worked with Brennans for 20 years, told the court he “absolutely refuted” Mr McCambridge’s claim that Brennans had deliberately copied the McCambridge packaging.
Asked by his counsel Declan McGrath what he thought of Mr McCambridge’s evidence that the Brennan product was “parasitic”, he said he took offence at the suggestion.
Cross-examined by Anthony Aston SC, for McCambridge’s, Mr Beatty disagreed the packaging chosen by Brennans for the relaunch was “confusingly similar” to the McCambridge packaging. If the products were presented on the store shelves in a vertical position, they were not confusingly similar but were indistinguishable if displayed at an angle, he said.
Asked what did he think about ten customers who had complained to McCambridge’s about the confusing packaging, he said consumers do make mistakes but he thought the numbers involved were very low.
Ivan Hammmond, another Brennans director, said he “totally refuted” the claim they deliberately copied the McCambridge packaging or had any intention to mimic it in the redesign.
Under cross-examination, he said the brief given to the designers for the new packaging included a number of objectives but an important one was that it should clearly differentiate the Brennan’s product from its competitors. They also wanted to get back customers who may have stopped buying the Brennans product and to cater for the growing trend among people to eat brown rather than white bread.
Asked why was it specifically suggested in the design brief that Brennan’s was seeking consumers to substitute the McCambridge bread for Brennans, Mr Hammond said that was to make the designers aware McCambridge’s was the market leader in this particular bread.
He disagreed a number of other designs were produced which would have been less confusing. Some were unattractive, while one such design made the product look “like a crisp packet”, he said.
The hearing before Mr Justice Michael Peart continues.