Swiss chocolate maker Milka cannot make square chocolate bars after Germany's highest court declared the distinctive confectionary configuration is the sole property of Ritter Sport.
The Federal Court of Justice in Germany decreed on Thursday 23 July 2020 that only Ritter Sport chocolate bars can be sold in the shape of a square in Germany.
German chocolatier Ritter Sport's popular 100-gram square bar is divided into 16 smaller squares, creating a four-by-four configuration.
The ruling comes after a 10-year-long attempt by American confectionary brand Mondel?z ? the third-largest confectionary company in the world after Mars and Ferrero ? to overturn Ritter Sport's monopoly on quadratic chocolate bars.
Mondel?z owns well-known brands including Cadbury, Toblerone and Oreo, but its Swiss-born brand Milka, which it has owned since 1990, was the focus of this particular legal battle. Image courtesy of Alaina Terwilliger via Pixabay
The controversy began in 2010 after Ritter Sport sued Mondel?z ? then known as Kraft Foods ? for selling a "double chocolate bar" with a similar quadratic design.
In 2016, Milka succeeded in getting the trademark deleted, but this ruling was later dismissed in October 2017, when the German Federal Court of Justice stated that only Ritter could sell square chocolate bars.

Mondel?z argued the square shape of a chocolate bar is simply a technical function of the product rather than a trademark-worthy quality. Under European legislation, a thr...