A legal brawl over a swirl of toothpaste

last updated 8 January 2015

To most, it’s a squiggle of toothpaste, said Clifford Marks in The Wall Street Journal. To the lawyers retained by GlaxoSmithKline and Colgate-Palmolive, it’s a “nurdle,” and a test of intellectual-property rights.

The two companies, makers of Aquafresh and Colgate toothpastes, respectively, both decorate their packaging with a “perfectly shaped,” tri-colored curl, or nurdle, of toothpaste. Glaxo, whose nurdle has adorned Aquafresh packaging for 20 years, complains that Colgate’s variant is an attempt to “trade off the commercial magnetism” of its innovation. Colgate’s packaging could confuse hurried shoppers looking for Aquafresh, say Glaxo’s lawyers. Studies show that consumers spend only 1/20th to 1/100th of a second “spotting their product in the store aisle.”