Toblerone enters second legal battle with Bern chocolate bar

Toblerone is famously modelled after the Matterhorn; Swissone says its pieces look more like the Syndey Opera House. © Keystone / Leandre Duggan

Mondelez, owner of the Toblerone chocolate brand, has launched new legal proceedings against a Bern manufacturer, complaining that the rival product exploits its reputation.

The American food group says there is a risk of confusion between the “Swissone” chocolate and their product: the individual pieces look too much like the triangular Toblerone blocks, modelled after the Matterhorn mountain in southern Switzerland, Mondelez claims.

Cocoa Luxury, the Swiss company who makes the Swissone bar, dispute this: their pieces “do not show mountains. The inspiration for the form were dunes and sea-shells”, Swissone owner Vernon Stuber told the SonntagsZeitung newspaper yesterday.

He says the pieces of the Swissone chocolate bar look more like the Sydney Opera House than the Matterhorn.

Stuber also says the ingredients of each product make all the difference: while at least 48% of his chocolate is made of cocoa, the main ingredient in Toblerone is sugar.

It’s not the first time the pair will have battled it out: earlier this year, a Bern commercial court also rejected Toblerone’s claim that the names of the two brands – i.e. the inclusion of the syllable “one” at the end of each – were confusingly similar. Mondelez was forced to pay compensation to Swissone after losing that case.