MOSCOW, December 6 (RAPSI) – Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) said on Tuesday it had found Trade House SanBonsai, Russian company producing soy sauce, in violation of competition law since its bottle design is confusingly similar to Kikkoman trademark.

“Packaging of [SanBonsai sauce, produced by SanBonsai company], is confusingly similar in its outer appearance [design] to the design of the bottles for Kikkoman soy sauce, which was created by Kenji Ekuan in 1961 and has since achieved worldwide recognition,” the statement of the agency reads.

A probe was launched at the request of Mistral Trading which is an exclusive distributor of Kіkkoman products.