Dutch court orders The Body Shop to compensate Rituals for copying its brand

The Court of Appeal in The Hague has found retail company The Body Shop guilty of copying its competitor Rituals’ range of skin care products for years. The Body Shop has to compensate Rituals for the damage suffered, the amount of which will be determined in a separate procedure.

The Body Shop is a retail chain that has been selling sustainable home and personal care products since 1976. It has around 2,500 stores worldwide. In recent years, the company has run into problems, partly due to the emergence of more successful competitors as the sustainability movement gained ground. This month, several business units filed for bankruptcy, according to RTL Nieuws.

Rituals, a former Unilever brand spun off by Dutch entrepreneur Raymond Cloosterman in 2000, is one of those competitors. Rituals has over 1,000 of its own stores worldwide and 3,900 points of sale in third-party stores.

This case revolves around a skincare line that The Body Shop launched in 2015. The Spa of the World - Secrets of the World in the Benelux area - range of body wash, body lotion, and massage oil. The range had four variants: Relaxing Ritual, Revitalizing Ritual, Blissful Ritual, and Firming Ritual. The word Ritual is very prominent on the products’ advertising.

Rituals objected to that and filed a lawsuit. It accused The Body Shop of trademark infringement and demanded that it stop using the word “ritual.” The Body Shop argued that its use of the word “ritual” was purely descriptive and that the word was very commonly used when it came to cosmetics and skincare.

In February 2022, the court in The Hague ruled that The Body Shop had copied Rituals and ordered it to cease and desist. The court did not order The Body Shop to compensate Rituals, saying that the Dutch brand did not indicate clearly enough how it had suffered damage.

The Body Shop appealed against the ruling. That was a mistake. The Court of Appeal in The Hague recently confirmed the first ruling, finding The Body Shop guilty of copyright infringement. It also ruled that The Body Shop must compensate Rituals for the damage suffered.

The judges acknowledged that the word “ritual” is often used in skincare products. But the appeals court found the “specific and prominent” way in which The Body Shop used the word in its in-stores displays and online unacceptable. The ruling mentions the “strikingly prominent and repeated use in capital letters of the world RITUAL.”

“It is likely that Rituals may have lost and will continue to lose out on consumers and market share due to confusion,” the appeals court ruled. A separate legal procedure will calculate the extent of the damage. The Body Shop must already pay approximately 36,000 euros to compensate Riutals’ investigation and lawyer costs for this procedure.

Rituals is “obviously satisfied” with the appeals court’s ruling, spokesperson Iris Buys told RTL Nieuws. “Over the past 24 years, we have carefully built our brand, nationally and internationally, into the powerful brand that it is today. This also means that we protect the unique character of our brand and act if we believe there is an infringement on our trademark rights.”

Lawyer Gregor Vos of The Body shop said his client is “obviously disappointed” in the ruling. “We think this ruling is very unjust. Rituals is, of course, a nice brand, but in our opinion, it is given far too much space to monopolize a common word. That is probably due to the fact that the judges are older men who have no idea what indications are used in the cosmetic industry.”

The Body Shop spokesperson Alexandra Fulton also called the ruling disappointing, speaking to RTL. “We fully respect intellectual property rights. We are currently reviewing the details of the ruling and considering our legal options.”