Waitrose is battling allegations of chocolate plagiarism in a hot-tempered dispute between rival factions of posh chocolatiers. The bosses of upmarket Hotel Chocolat have written to the supermarket’s chief executive in fury after it launched a range of bars they claim bear an uncanny resemblance to their own. Hotel Chocolat’s co-founder Angus Thirlwell said eagle-eyed chocoholics first spotted the alleged copycat bars in Waitrose earlier this week and alerted him to the similarity.All the Waitrose bars are roughly the same size as Hotel Chocolat’s and share a distinctive wavy edge that sets them apart from mass-produced bars with straight sides. Thirlwell said Hotel Chocolat had legal protection for its its curved-edge design from the European Union’s intellectual property office.
