In case you haven’t been to your local “packie” lately, craft breweries are popping up faster than a hops vine. Occurring in tandem with this proliferation of breweries and quirky beer names, are incidents of breweries clashing over their names and the names of their products. We’re not the first to discuss this phenomenon, but given ongoing reports of trademark spats, the size of the craft brewery market, and the importance of branding to craft breweries, consideration of trademark issues is critical to anyone involved in commercial craft brewing. With approximately 4,600 breweries operating in the U.S., it can be […]

Recently, I was discussing with a client a topic that I think is often overlooked by businesses.  If you’ve been following us for a while, you know we’re [perhaps not surprisingly] big proponents of businesses registering their trademarks at the federal level.  Although obtaining a registration is an important part of protecting the goodwill that a business has accrued in its trademarks, in connection with the goods/services it currently offers [hint, hint], doing so is not the “end of the story.” When a company adopts a new mark in connection with its goods and/or services, seeking to “clear,” protect, and […]

O.K., that may be overstating things a bit, but big changes are on the horizon for trademarks in the EU.  As background: member nations of the EU maintain their own trademark regulations and registration systems, and are also part of a separate EU body called the “Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market” (“OHIM”), which is responsible for the administration, registration and maintenance of “Community Trademarks,” which cover all of the EU. The changes generally seek to harmonize the trademark laws of the various EU members and OHIM (which is, thankfully, being re-named the “European Union Intellectual Property Office”), with […]