20A local NC brewery is in a battle which has been brewing with a MI brewery over an unregistered trademark for about a year. Innovation Brewing, based in Sylva, North Carolina attempted to register its brewery name in late 2013. Bell’s Brewery, based in Comstock, Michigan, a well-known craft brewery has filed an opposition to the registration of Innovation’s mark with the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB). Bell’s has been using the unregistered mark, “Bottling innovation since 1985” on bumper stickers for some time (the mark does not appear on any of Bell’s bottles of beer).
The breweries seem to have conflicting stories about how each has treated the other. Innovation claims that Bell’s never made any real attempt at working out the issue outside of the TTAB. Bell’s received a lot of public backlash after the initial news stories about the matter. Bell’s has stated that it did offer to pay for all of Innovation’s legal expenses and sign a “coexistence agreement” that would allow both breweries to continue to use the mark. Innovation claims that the coexistence agreement would hinder their desired expansion and growth outside of the NC beer market.
These types of trademark disputes are becoming more and more common, as the craft brewing market becomes more saturated. Breweries should look into alternative solutions to solving these issues, as the legal expenses involved in lawsuits and advocating for successful registration of a mark can pile up quickly.
One final note (without taking sides in this one): Bell’s technically has a legal obligation to protect it’s mark (even if unregistered), and if it fails to do so, will lose the mark as a trademark.
A few news articles on this specific dispute:
http://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2015/03/10/small-wnc-brewery-big-trademark-dispute/24715493/
http://www.mlive.com/beer/2015/03/5_things_bells_brewery_wants_y.html
http://mibiz.com/item/22297-editor%E2%80%99s-notebook-larry-bell-unsettled-by-anger-toward-bell%E2%80%99s-brewery
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