Vittoria has won its legal battle against the second-largest coffee company in the world, which picked a fight against the Australian brand over its instant coffee glass jar packaging, arguing that it was passing off Moccona’s “iconic” jar shape.

Justice Michael Wheelahan dismissed the claims of Moccona’s maker – the $15 billion American-Dutch coffee giant Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) – saying that there was little chance consumers couldn’t tell the difference between the two brands.

JDE had claimed that Vittoria’s 400g glass jar, used to sell freeze-dried instant coffee, has engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct and that consumers might mistake Vittoria’s products for Moccona.

In his judgment delivered on Thursday, Justice Wheelahan said the Moccona jar had a “fairly squat body” that sits beneath a “slowly sloping shoulder and a tall lid” which makes up about a third of the jar’s overall height.

Meanwhile, he said, customers would see the Vittoria jar as “noticeably taller in its proportions, with a compressed neck section, and a plain, low lid”.

“I do not consider there to be a real, tangible risk that a notional buyer, with a recollection only of the [Moccona] shape mark’s rough proportions and general shape, would be perplexed, mixed up, caused to wonder, or left in doubt, about whether instant coffee sold in the [Vittoria] jar shape has the same commercial source as coffee sold in the [Moccona] shape mark,” Justice Wheelahan stated.

“I conclude that the [Vittoria] jar shape is not deceptively similar to the [Moccona] shape mark. On this basis, too, I find that the applicants’ infringement case must fail.”

This masthead first revealed that JDE, which also manufactures L’Or Espresso, Pickwicks tea, Piazza D’Oro and more, launched Federal Court proceedings against Vittoria in February last year. Sold in Australia since 1960, Moccona has made its jar a distinguishing feature of the brand, featuring it in film ads and limited edition designs without any Moccona branding.