Sunday, October 22, 2023

Oh, patents! Twix bars

 Copyright © Françoise Herrmann

Twix, short for "twin sticks" was launched in 1965, more than half a century ago. Twix is a tale of two-candy-bars-in-one. The right bar and the left bar, each one a crunchy shortbread biscuit, topped with caramel, and dipped in milk chocolate. However, it’s not the recipe that is protected,  nor the manufacturing process, it’s the ornamental design of the “twin sticks”, side-by-side, offering more than one bar in a single package, that is patented. 

The US design patent, USD575477S, titled Confectionery, was awarded on August 26, 2008 to a group of five inventors (one Austrian and four Dutch): Hugo Eitler, Bert Van Dijk, Jan Arts, Tineke Leijdens, and Nathalie Matysiak. A design patent that was subsequently assigned to Mars Inc., a multinational confectionary company that continues to produce Twix bars. 

Below, the patent Figure 1 depicts a front perspective of the Twix bar design. The image of a marketed Twix bar pack is also included directly below the patent drawing. 



Reference

Mars Inc. 

https://www.mars.com/about


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