A tail of two Yetis: Red Yeti sued by Great Divide.

Although I recall hearing about this dispute previously, it seems I neglected to mention it here at the PC blog. Maybe it was on social media. No matter.

Whatever one's position on Great Divide's trademark claim, ignoring a cease and desist order might not be the best legal maneuver.

Having recently been compelled to engage the services of an attorney, who prices hourly services very fairly, it occurs to me that a few hours on the clock can wipe out a Friday night's take -- and Great Divide probably has deeper pockets.  

We await further developments. If it were me, and the lawsuit goes badly for Red Yeti, I'd go with Red Trotsky as a replacement. There may even be posters somewhere.

Colorado brewer sues Jeffersonville’s Red Yeti brewpub in trademark dispute, by Marcus Green (WDRB)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – Since opening in 2013, The Red Yeti brewpub and restaurant in Jeffersonville, Ind., has used a sunglasses-clad, arm-swinging creature as its logo.

But to Denver’s Great Divide Brewing Co., the beast that adorns the Spring Street business is an abomination that needs to go.

Great Divide filed a federal lawsuit against Red Yeti on Friday, accusing the Southern Indiana company of trademark infringement, deceptive trade practices and unfairly using the image. It seeks an injunction banning Red Yeti from displaying the “confusingly similar” designer, a jury trial and unspecified damages.

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"Craft Brewers Are Running Out Of Names," clever or otherwise.

Evidently Leg Spreader was NOT already taken

A few years back, when NABC decided to brew a Helles-style lager full time, we did what we imagined was due diligence and searched the Internet to see if Bat Out of Helles already was taken. We didn't see anything, so stuck with it.

Last year, we received a very nice e-mail from a brewery elsewhere, informing us that it produces a beer by the same name -- well, almost the same name: Bat Outta Helles. While hitherto this had not been worth nothing, canning was about to begin ... and so could we chat about terms of shared usage, i.e., our continued in-house, draft-only use of the name outside of the other brewery's distribution area, etc?

Frankly, Bat Out of Helles wasn't my favored name, anyway, so I wrote back and said we had no problem whatever changing to mere Helles, a style descriptor beyond restrictive copyright, much like ... steam beer?

Never mind.

Craft Brewers Are Running Out Of Names, And Into Legal Spats, by Alastair Bland (NPR)

Columbia? Taken. Mississippi? Taken. Sacramento? El Niño? Marlin? Grizzly? Sorry, they're all taken.

Virtually every large city, notable landscape feature, creature and weather pattern of North America — as well as myriad other words, concepts and images — has been snapped up and trademarked as the name of either a brewery or a beer. For newcomers to the increasingly crowded industry of more than 3,000 breweries, finding names for beers, or even themselves, is increasingly hard to do without risking a legal fight.

More about frozen weenies and powdered milk.

Earlier this year after our provisional food menu went viral, I exchanged e-mails with Melinda Haring, the Activism Manager at the Institute for Justice. The IJ is a legitimate entity, and was featured a few days ago as part of an article in the New York Times about city-mandated tourist guide licenses in Savannah, Georgia.

A few days ago, the IJ picked up our statutory compliance menu in a web site posting:

INDIANA LAW REQUIRES BREWHOUSES TO SERVE HOT DOGS AND MILK

If Bank Street Brewhouse’s sleek exterior and silver siding in New Albany, Ind., doesn’t catch your eye, its unusual menu might. Loaded with sarcasm and bite, the menu offers “Chef Campbell’s Soup of the Day,” helpfully “served in a bowl. Your choice of whichever can is on the top of the stack.” 

Alternatively, a hungry diner can sample a hotdog, “microwaved to perfection, including both weenie and bun, sans condiments.” But people don’t go to Bank Street Brewhouse for anything other than beer, making the state’s law requiring any establishment with an alcoholic beverage sales permit to maintain a restaurant on its premises burdensome and out of touch with consumers.

The article includes this bit of encouragement:

Take action: If you own a brewery in Indiana and want to challenge the state’s absurd requirement that you serve hot soup, hot sandwiches, coffee and milk, and soft drinks, please contact us. We can help!

This is the same offer extended to NABC back in September when the story first broke, and as a director on the board of the Brewers of Indiana Guild, and a team player when it comes to industry solidarity, I took the notion of IJ assistance to BIG's legal counsel and discussed the matter with the board.

The conclusion was that with this food requirement issue being a likely candidate for legislative action this coming spring, there isn't any need to contemplate legal maneuverings until the legislative process has played out. I told Melinda this, and she offered to help in the sense of getting word out, which I interpret the IJ's posting to be.

I encourage any Indiana brewery owners reading these words, who might be tempted to contact Melinda and the IFJ, to at least wait until we see how the legislative agenda is progressing. It's just a few more months of freezer burn and stale instant coffee. However, if legislative relief is not forthcoming, then perhaps we all should band together and see what the IJ can do.

It's simple pragmatism: While the food service requirement is a nagging pain in the butt, there are bigger fish to fry when one considers Indiana brewing's legislative goals overall. Let's just keep it in perspective  ... for now.

Magic Ass Hat runs amok as Goose Island drinkers yawn.

For those still somehow naively believing that sources and ownership stakes don't matter as long as the beer stokes his or her self-serving narcissism, or that "big beer" is NOT malign by the necessity of its very nature, please check out the West Sixth and Magic Hat sixes and nines lawsuit imbroglio and learn something from it.

‘You’d think we could settle this over a beer’: Multinational sues West Sixth microbrewery over trademark, by Michael Tierney (Insider Louisville)

We have serious David versus Goliath on our hands.

Magic Hat IP and Independent Brewers Corp. have filed a federal lawsuit against West Sixth Brewing Co., based in Lexington.

Better yet, just stick a Magic Hat #9 logo on that fellow's posterior (above), and it's my reaction in a nutshell.

This story's all over the Internetz, and deservedly so. About all I can add is that we probably need to get used to it: A no-longer-craft corporate poseur almost surely prompted by an AB-InBev wholesaler hiding on the grassy knoll gleefully piddles on a genuine local/regional craft producer (West Sixth), confident in the knowledge that the target audience for Magic Hat is utterly oblivious to the concerns of craft beer consciousness as we know them.

I was asked yesterday whether being non-craft means Magic Hat must lose legal protection s enjoyed by all Americans. Of course not. What they inevitably lose of their own accord in the absence of ethical craft consciousness is an equitable sense of grace -- but that's what all corporate chains lack.

Now it's our brave new world, and Magic Ass Hat is just an unwelcome part of it.

And my solution?

That's easy: Polemics. Read and repeat. And drink some West Sixth to show some solidarity against the vandals.

What's the big deal? watery parts is watery parts.

(Better late than never)

Item: InBev Sued For Overstating Budweiser Alcohol Content

If suing AB-InBev for misrepresenting alcoholic content requires admitting you've been drinking case after case ofAB-InBev alcoholic soda pop ... well, whatever happened to "wouldn't say swill if you had a mouthful"?

Accusing AB-InBev of watering its beer is like blaming Burger King for minced horse Whoppers: Adulteration is the very nature of the (corporate) beast, and there’s no need for redundancy, because “watered down” is another way of saying flavorless, and flavorlessness is implicit when it comes to mass-market lager, which thrives by offending as few prospective swallowers as possible.

Watering? It hardly matters which stage of the process results in the most dilution of essence, when such conceptual futility is the aim of the exercise from the very start.

I must admit that the lawsuits against AB-InBev are amusing. Watching people confess to buying a six-pack a day of Budweiser for five years, only now suffering from pervasive mental anguish borne of the realization that they never got quite as wasted as they thought, hits almost as close to the mark as eating the Rally's dollar menu every day before suddenly awakening to the verdict of poor health.

Responsibility, anyone?