I’ve written twice before about the saga of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel, specifically about (a) the 2021 decision by the B&J board to not renew the license of its Israeli licensee of over 30 years, Avi Zinger (and two companies he owns) because he refused to capitulate to a demand that he not sell in areas of Israel that were occupied by Jordan from 1948 through June 1967, viz. Judea and Samaria, and (b) the licensee’s suit against B&J and its parent company, Unilever, filed earlier this year in New Jersey, to force Unilever to continue to allow the licensee to produce Ben & Jerry’s ice cream in Israel and to sell it throughout the country, including in Judea and Samaria.
In June Unilever and the licensee settled that suit by agreeing, among other things, to transfer to the licensee all of the Unilever’s Ben & Jerry’s intellectual property in Israel, and that henceforth the Israeli licensee would be the owner of the that IP and would continue to sell manufacture Ben & Jerry’s ice cream throughout Israel, provided that its labeling be in Hebrew and Arabic, and not in English. On that basis, the licensee’s suit against Unilever was dropped.
But that wasn’t good enough for some of the Jew-haters at B&J in Vermont: soon thereafter, Ben & Jerry’s board – or rather, a group of members of that board – sued Unilever in federal court in New York, seeking to nullify the agreement with the Israeli licensee. Those B&J board members subsequently filed an amended complaint. Last week Unilever filed a memorandum of law in support of its motion to dismiss the case at the pleadings stage. Unilever’s grounds for dismissal are numerous, and include the point that neither of Avi Zinger’s companies were named as defendants, so that as non-joined “indispensable parties”, the suit can’t go forward. But the real crux of the motion is that in 2000, when Unilever took over Ben & Jerry’s, it assumed responsibility for all commercial decisions about IP, and that Ben & Jerry’s board therefore doesn’t have a basis to sue.
In the meantime, Avi Zinger & Co. continue to produce and sell Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, Unilever has assigned its Ben & Jerry’s trademarks in Israel to one of Avi Zinger’s companies, and at least here in Israel, they’re proceeding on the assumption that this is a done deal. Notice the signage on the Ben & Jerry’s factory, which I toured recently courtesy of Alyza Lewin, who spearheaded the Avi Zinger’s suit against Unilever and the subsequent negotiations that led to the settlement. The English lettering has been removed, and covered over with Hebrew lettering only. I have to say I was a bit disappointed to discover there were no Oompa-Loompas working in the factory, but, as is usually the case in industrial manufacturing, there were some cool machines (how do you get all the caps for the tubs of ice cream oriented in the right position?) … that we weren’t allowed to photograph.