Recently Atari SA has filed a lawsuit against Nestle claiming that the Swiss food company is using its 1970s classic video game Breakout to sell their chocolate, Kit Kat. Now, Nestle has answered Atari's claims.
Atari accused that Nestle has used and abused the company's goodwill and reputation over Facebook, Twitter and television by exploiting the name, look and feel of "Breakout." On Thursday, the company had filed a copyright and trademark infringement complaint in San Francisco.
Nestle along with its US and UK affiliates has done it to hone Kit Kat's popularity by using the appetite of "nostalgic Baby Boomers, Generation X, and even today's Millennial and post-Millennial 'gamers,'" added Atari in the lawsuit.
While responding to it, one spokesperson of Nestle UK said, "We are aware of the lawsuit in the US and will defend ourselves strongly against these allegations," reported Channel News Asia.
Breakout was first developed by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak along with the other co-founder of the tech firm, Steve Jobs, as a successor to the video game Pong. The video game in question requires the players to knock down rows of bricks with a paddle in order to proceed in the game. Kit Kat in its ad campaign has simply replaced the bricks with brown bars of Kit Kat. The Kit Kat Bites commercial is titled "Kit Kat: Breakout" and it shows that adults and children are knocking the Kit Kat bars down in place of bricks using a paddle, said Atari.
Atari said it "had to have been obvious" to Nestle that its "heist" of Atari intellectual property rights was illegal. "Nestle has no excuse," they added.
According to the Nestle UK spokesperson, the commercial ad was only featured in the United Kingdom and it is not running anymore.
