Today’s smile continues our “batch” of cake- and bread-related mirth.

The Spectator mazagine reported:

In news that shook the world of children’s parties, office birthdays, and millennials, Colin the Caterpillar went to war. M&S has filed an intellectual property claim with the High Court against Aldi, in an effort to protect their chocolate-covered swiss roll celebration cake, and demanded that Aldi stop selling their copy cat-erpillar, Cuthbert.

The action has caused quite a stir – there is a hashtag #FreeCuthbert…

The original cake recently celebrated its thirtieth birthday, and has a girlfriend cake (?!) called Connie the Caterpillar.

Aldi is not the only British supermarket to have copied the cake – there has been a succession of wannabees: Asda’s Clyde the Caterpillar; Tesco’s Curly the Caterpillar; Co-op’s Curious the Caterpillar; Waitrose’s Cecil the Caterpillar; Sainsburys’ Wiggles the Caterpillar; and Morrisons’ Morris the Caterpillar (the last two “seem to have missed the alliterative memo”).

Mark Caddle, a partner at the intellectual property firm Withers & Rogers has described the Aldi case as the “battle of the caterpillars”.

The article in the Spectator can be found here – it has free access if you read less than 3 articles. You might also enjoy the blog post on the matter by David Allen Green on his law and policy blog.

Tempted to say – only in England… 😉