Budget supermarket Aldi has lost its appeal against a ruling that it infringed Marks and Spencer's design of a festive gin-based liqueur bottle featuring gold flakes and LED lights. 'Although they would not prejudice the validity of the registered design, they would reduce its scope of protection, potentially to nil. The fact that the shape of the bottle was protected by a third party registered design is irrelevant apart from the fact that the design therefore formed part of the design corpus which the judge took into account. He added: 'It confirms the scope of the 12-month grace period is slightly wider than we thought. 'It emphasises that registered designs are a very useful form of protection against lookalike products and rights holders can achieve success with the right case.
