Cadbury Owner Demands Vegan Brand Moo Free Pull Snowball Treats

Mondelez International, which owns Cadbury and Toblerone, has demanded that the vegan chocolate brand Moo Free remove products from shelves over the word "snowball", according to The Guardian.

The dispute centres on a trademark, which is a name or sign that a company registers so that it can legally control its use for certain goods. Cadbury registered Snowball and Snowballs as trademarks for chocolate confectionery in 2001. Cadbury Snowballs first went on sale in the UK in 1966, and since 2023 they have been sold as packs of Mini Snow Balls. Those are Dairy Milk chocolate covered in a crispy shell of white icing sugar.

The product at the heart of the row is Moo Free's White Choccy Snowballs, which are gluten-free rice balls with a biscuit flavour, covered in dairy-free white chocolate. Moo Free has sold them for about two years. Mondelez sent the company a legal letter accusing it of trademark infringement, meaning the unauthorised use of a protected name, and demanded that the products be taken off shelves immediately ahead of the Christmas period.

Moo Free is a Devon-based company, co-founded in 2010 by Mike Jessop. It began selling online before being picked up by Waitrose, and its products are now stocked by several major supermarkets as well as online.

A Mondelez spokesperson said that no legal action has been taken. The company, the spokesperson said, has contacted Moo Free about its trademark and is open to a friendly settlement. Moo Free has said it does not accept that any infringement has been established, and it expressed solidarity with Catherine's Originals, another vegan brand.

The Moo Free dispute follows a separate case. Days earlier, Mondelez launched legal action against Catherine's Originals, accusing its O'bar of copying the chunky shape of Toblerone.