Recent heightened competition in the craft brewery industry has spawned a wave of legal disputes over naming rights of the umpteen upscale beers that can be found in stores and bars across the country.
Now, Hartford’s City Steam Brewery Café has the distinction of being possibly the first legal target in Connecticut, which has about 27 active breweries. And unlike a number of trademark disputes around the country, this one isn’t about the name of a particular City Steam beer — like Blonde on Blonde pale ale or Naughty Nurse — but rather the City Steam name itself.
California’s Anchor Brewing Co., maker of Anchor Steam beer, which is distributed nationwide, has asked a Connecticut judge to order City Steam to stop using the name that has adorned its brewpub and various malted concoctions since 1997, calling it “confusingly similar” to its own name. Anchor has also asked for civil damages and attorney’s fees.
City Steam has been expanding distribution of its bottled beer over the past five years and is now selling in much of New England and New York.
But a growing distribution network wasn’t what drew Anchor’s attention, according to its San Francisco attorney James Wesley Kinnear.
Anchor first became aware of City Steam, Kinnear said, when the smaller brewery filed an application in 2012 for a trademark on “City Steam” as it relates to many different types of beverages, including, of course, beer.
Anchor registered its trademark “Steam Beer” as it relates to the same class of products in 1982, records show. Anchor opposed City Steam’s trademark application and reached out to the Hartford brewery to negotiate a possible agreement, Kinnear said.
Those negotiations eventually fell apart, he said, and Anchor filed suit Jan. 27 in U.S. District Court in New Haven.
“In the craft beer world, people get along with each other; beer makes people happy,” Kinnear said. “Anchor doesn’t like being in a dispute with anybody. However, it has consistently, as it has to, defended its trademarks.”
City Steam owner Jay DuMond said in an email that he intends to fight Anchor’s claims, but on the advice of his attorney, declined further comment on the lawsuit.
Growing Trend
Though no organization appears to track data on the frequency of legal actions between craft brewers, Candace Moon, a California attorney who represents beer makers (but not Anchor), said the number of legal challenges has grown in recent years.
“Any industry that grows faster than it expected is going to have growing pains,” Moon said.
A few recent examples: In December, a fledgling Virginia brewery Topsail Brewing Co. voluntarily changed its name to Fair Winds Brewing Co. after a trademark challenge from an Oregon brewer. That same month, a Maryland craft brewer changed its name from Citizens Brewing Co. to Denizens Brewing Co. following a challenge from a Washington, D.C. brewery that made a beer called The Citizen.
In 2012, Knoxville, Tenn.’s Marble City Brewing Co. changed its name to Saw Works Brewing Co. a year after New Mexico’s Marble Brewery filed suit against it.
Brewing trade publications and blogs also are full of stories about cease-and-desist letters over similar names of particular beers.
Anchor Brewing Co. isn’t unfamiliar with legal disputes. It was sued in 2011 by the iconic Boston Beer Co., maker of Sam Adams, over claims that it recruited one of Boston’s executives to steal trade secrets.
The two sides reached an out-of-court settlement, according to published reports.
Protection Matters
Though researching and filing for a trademark is one of the first things Moon recommends a new brewery does, many small brewers don’t do it, she said.
Attorneys can be expensive, and fledgling brewers may be focused on honing their recipe, rather than envisioning the legal protections their product would need if it is one day sold to a wider market.
“When you fall into the same world, the potential for confusion becomes greater,” Moon said. “Then they start running into each other.”
Moon said key facts in a trademark case like Anchor’s will be proving prior ownership and use of the trademark. There also must be proof there’s potential for consumers to confuse the two products.
“City Steam will have a hard time with this one,” Moon said.
She predicts the company may have to change the name on its bottled products, though probably not on its restaurant.
