"As Jennifer Rankin reports at The Guardian, the case involved a product called Virgin Gin Alkoholfrei. The organization Verband Sozialer Wettbewerb ("Association for Social Competition") filed a lawsuit against the company selling booze-free gin, arguing that to call a beverage without alcohol "gin" was misleading.The court agreed and went on to clarify that "gin" could only be used to describe beverages that met a specific list of criteria, including the use of juniper berries and presence of ethyl alcohol."
"EU courts are also not the only legal bodies to issue rulings along these lines. Last year, a court in the U.K. ruled that oat milk manufacturer Oatly could not trademark the phrase "Post Milk Generation" because it had to do with the presence - or, in this case, absence - of milk in Oatly's actual product.This feels like a significant moment for the industry, which has seen some non-alcoholic spirits manufacturers opt to be explicit about what spirit their products emulate,"
An EU legal body ruled that the term "gin" is reserved for beverages meeting specific criteria, including the use of juniper berries and presence of ethyl alcohol. A lawsuit targeted a product called Virgin Gin Alkoholfrei and alleged that labeling a non-alcoholic drink as "gin" was misleading; the court agreed. The decision aligns with prior rulings that restrict use of established product names for emulations lacking key ingredients, such as a 2017 ruling on "butter." A recent U.K. ruling on Oatly's trademark similarly tied naming to ingredient presence or absence, influencing industry naming strategies.
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