Summary: The European Union's General Court has ruled against the British supermarket chain Iceland, canceling its exclusive trademark for the name "Iceland." The court determined that geographical names must remain available for public use and that the trademark could mislead consumers into thinking products originated from the country. The supermarket's executive chairman has decided not to appeal the ruling, ending the decade-long legal dispute with the Icelandic government.
Main Topics Covered:
1. The outcome of the trademark dispute between Iceland (the country) and Iceland (the supermarket chain).
2. The legal reasoning behind the EU court's decision to cancel the trademark.
3. The reactions from both parties and the implications for protecting geographical names.
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Iceland Defeats Iceland: A U.K. Supermarket Ends a Trademark Dispute
Can a company trademark the name of a country? In the case of Iceland, the British grocery store, the answer is no.
Iceland, the Nordic nation, has prevailed over Iceland, the British supermarket chain specializing in frozen foods, ending a decadelong legal dispute over the supermarket’s exclusive rights to the “Iceland” name.
The trademark disagreement culminated this week when Richard Walker, the executive chairman of the grocery chain, said he would not appeal a European Union court decision that ruled in favor of the Icelandic government and canceled the chain’s trademark for “Iceland.”
“Going to the highest European Court would cost us thousands more in fees, so I thought, ‘Sod this,’” Mr. Walker said in an interview on Wednesday, using a British phrase to express extreme frustration. “I just don’t see the point anymore.”
Now Mr. Walker is extending something of an olive branch to the Nordic nation and its people. The supermarket chain plans to offer extra discounts on a number of products to shoppers in Iceland (the country), at some point in the future, Mr. Walker said. The move was reported earlier by The Financial Times.
For five years, starting in 2014, Iceland, the supermarket, had exclusive rights to the “Iceland” label for its products sold in the European Union. The Icelandic government successfully sued the supermarket in 2016 in a European Union court, leading the trademark to be canceled in 2019. European Union courts upheld the decision in 2022 and 2025 after the supermarket filed appeals.
The European Union’s General Court concluded that the public could be misled to think that items labeled “Iceland” were from the country rather than the British grocer, and that geographical names must remain available for public use. (The ruling does not mean that the supermarket will have to change its name, but rather that other businesses in Iceland will be able to use the term).
Mr. Walker, the supermarket’s executive chairman, said that when his mother, Rhianydd Walker, came up with the name “Iceland” for the family’s business, founded in 1970, she was not thinking about the island nation but about a generic icy land that would be fitting for a company that sells frozen foods.
Today, Iceland has nearly 1,000 stores in Britain, as well as stores in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. It has three locations in Iceland, the country.
The Icelandic government welcomed the end of the legal dispute. It is valuable for Icelandic companies “to be able to clearly refer to their Icelandic origin, with all the underlying thoughts of clean air and pristine nature that it carries,” said Thorgerdur Katrin Gunnarsdottir, Iceland’s foreign minister in a statement after the E.U. court ruling last year.
Brynhildur Georgsdottir, a lawyer for Business Iceland, which represented Icelandic businesses in the lawsuit against the supermarket, said that the grocer had virtually no chance of another successful appeal. “They have come to the end station,” she said, using an Icelandic expression.
“We are hoping this will help countries protect their names, and that international law will be changed to give country names special protection,” she said, adding that this was especially important for smaller countries with fewer resources to defend their legal interests.
“It seems to be easy for large companies to use the names of smaller countries,” she said.
Brands frequently tether their names to their geographical roots — take Fiji Water, which is sourced in Fiji, or Evian, the bottled water brand sourced in Évian-les-Bains, France. But there is also a long history of companies choosing names linked to places purely because of the images they evoke.
In 1880, the New York cream cheese-making company adopted the name Philadelphia Cream Cheese not because of a particular connection to the city, but because of Philadelphia’s association with having good food.
Patagonia, an outdoor clothing and gear company founded in California, named itself after the South American region because the word brings to mind “romantic visions of glaciers tumbling into fjords, jagged windswept peaks, gauchos and condors,” the company’s founder, Yvon Chouinard, wrote in his memoir. (And because it can be pronounced in every language, he added).
And Amazon, the world’s biggest online retailer and also the name of the world’s largest rain forest, won a yearslong legal dispute in 2019 with the eight South American countries that contain parts of the rain forest over the .amazon internet domain.
Ms. Georgsdottir of Business Iceland said that she thought patent rules should be reconsidered around the names of regions, too. For now, she was celebrating that companies in Iceland would not be prevented from using the “Iceland” label.
“To me, it always sounded crazy,” she said, “and it sounded unbelievable that a foreign company could get full ownership of the word ‘Iceland.’”
Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times covering breaking news and other topics.
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