The UK supermarket chain Iceland has abandoned its decade-long trademark battle with Iceland and instead promised a “rapprochement discount” for shoppers in the country.
After the budget grocery chain suffered its third legal loss last year, its executive chair, Richard Walker, said on Wednesday that it would draw a line under the dispute.
Lord Walker told the Financial Times he would take “the couple of hundred grand we would have spent in legal fees in the fourth and final round in the EU court and reapply that to a rapprochement discount to the good Icelandic people. It’s something I’m going to do.”
The discount is expected to take the form of shopping vouchers that Icelandic people can use at the frozen food retailer.
The government of Iceland launched legal action against its namesake British grocery chain in 2016. It challenged its exclusive ownership of the European-wide trademark registration for the word Iceland, which it said was preventing the country’s companies from promoting goods and services abroad.
In July last year, the EU general court upheld a ruling cancelling the grocer’s EU trademark registration for the word Iceland. The court reaffirmed that geographical names must remain available for public use.
Walker told the FT: “We lost for a third time. We’re going to throw in the towel. It’s actually fine – we don’t have to change our name.” But he expressed concern that “other people now have the ability to open shops and call it Iceland and stock Iceland products”.
The retailer confirmed the legal action had been dropped.
Walker took over the leadership of Iceland in 2023 after his father, Malcolm Walker, stepped down from the frozen foods chain he co-founded in 1970. The current boss, previously a supporter of the Conservatives, was recently made a Labour peer by Keir Starmer, and was appointed as the government’s cost of living champion a month ago.
The company, based in Deeside in Wales, is privately owned by Malcolm Walker and its chief executive, Tarsem Dhaliwal, who joined in 1985 as a trainee accountant.
It had a long spell on the London Stock Exchange from 1984 and was renamed The Big Food Group, but returned to family control in 2012 after a £1.45bn management buyout led by Malcolm Walker and the South African investment group Brait. Walker and Dhaliwal bought Brait out in June 2020.
The company grew from a single shop selling loose frozen food in Oswestry in Shropshire and now has more than 900 company-owned stores across the UK, trading under the Iceland and The Food Warehouse names.
Iceland also has franchised stores in the Channel Islands, Spain and Portugal.
The company went into partnership with the Icelandic investment company SKEL in 2024 to distribute its products in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland through a joint venture known as ICE JV EHF.
Last month it launched a new concession, or “store within a store”, into the Icelandic retailer Nettó, and it supplies other Nettó stores in the country. There is also an Iceland supermarket in Reykjavik.