In recent days, two very famous Swiss food products have ended up at the center of legal issues regarding their name and the safeguarding of their origin, obtaining unfavorable judgments for the companies that produce them. A US court ruled on Friday that the term “Gruyere” could be used by all cheese makers, not just those in the cheese’s original region of origin, the city of Gruyeres, Switzerland. Toblerone chocolate, on the other hand, will have to comply with the strict laws concerning products actually manufactured in Switzerland and will no longer be able to display the traditional shape of the Matterhorn on its packaging.
Toblerone chocolate, produced since 1908 with the characteristic triangular shape that recalls the shape of the Cervino (Matterhorn in German), after various changes of ownership is now a brand of the American multinational Mondelez Group. Even if the current factory in Bern will not be closed, from next autumn it will mostly be produced in Slovakia, in Bratislava. Based on a Swiss law approved in 2017 to defend national productions, it can no longer be defined as “Made in Swiss” or use national symbols: these include the Matterhorn, located on the border between Switzerland and Italy. The company has announced that the design on the packaging will be replaced by a stylized mountain and a signature of the founder Theodor Tobler: the name Toblerone was a fusion between Tobler and the Italian word “torrone”. It can no longer be defined as “made in Switzerland” but only as “born in Switzerland”.
For very similar reasons to protect the brand, the consortia producing Gruyere have been engaged for over a year in a lawsuit to obtain the exclusive use of the term also on the American market, where instead types of cheese are sold as Gruyere they have nothing to do with Gruyère. The Food and Drug Administration, the agency which, among other things, deals with food placed on the market in the United States, had established that to fall within the definition it was necessary and sufficient for the cheese to have small holes and to be aged for at least 90 days . However, the European gruyere consortia had sued, losing in the first instance in July 2022: now the appeal sentence has also arrived.
Gruyère cheese competition in the United States (AP Photo/Carrie Antlfinger)
There are only two regions in Europe that can produce gruyere cheese: one is precisely that of the city of Gruyeresin Switzerland, and the other is that of French Gruyère, in the Franche-Comté and Savoy regions, where the cheese has been produced since the second half of the eighteenth century. The two areas owning the term gruyere were defined in 1951 in the International Convention of Stresaan agreement between various European countries on the names of cheeses, and later by the European Union.
The ruling of the US Court of Appeals which has jurisdiction over patents and trademarks, based in Richmond, Virginia, established instead that the American rules “cannot be as rigid” as the European ones. According to the Court, “a certain type of cheese has been defined and sold as gruyere for decades in the United States, regardless of where it is produced, making the term generic”. The lawyers of the Franco-Swiss producers have announced that they will continue to seek “legal avenues to protect the brand also on the US market”.