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Gaming company Atari has accused Nestle of breaching its copyright bycopying Breakout, the 1970s-computer game, in a KitKat marketing campaign.
In a complaint filed yesterday in federal court in San Francisco, Atari said the advert showed Nestlé knowingly exploited the Breakout name, look and feel through social media and a video, and hoped to exploit ‘the special place it holds among nostalgic baby boomers, Generation X, and even today’s millennial and post-millennial gamers’.
The advert features a game similar to Breakout but the bricks are replaced with KitKat bars.
Atari said: “Nestle simply took the classic ‘Breakout’ screen, replaced its bricks with KitKat bars, and invited customers to ‘breakout’ and buy more candy bars.
“The infringing conduct in this case is so plain and blatant that Nestle cannot claim to be an ‘innocent’ infringer.
“Nestle knew exactly what it was doing.”
A Nestle’s spokesperson said: “This is a UK TV advert that ran in 2016. The ad no longer runs and we have no current plans to re-run it.
“We are aware of the lawsuit in the US and will defend ourselves strongly against these allegations.”
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