Sensible Canadian Trademark Ruling Takes Overall Impression Of Branding Into Account
from the well-done dept
We talk so much here about silly trademark disputes, often times resulting in equally silly court rulings, that, every once in a while, it's probably worth the effort to point out when a court gets things exactly right. For this, we travel up to Canada, where a Federal Court judge presided over a trademark dispute between Pacific Western Brewing and Cerveceria del Pacifico over the branding of their brews. At issue was the labels on packaging for PWB's Pacific Pilsner and Cerveceria's Pacifico Clara. PWB argued at court that the branding and language was too similar and would confuse customers. Here are samples of each beer's branding.
So, yeah, other than roughly similar uses of the word "Pacific", there's not a whole lot of similarity here. Normally, this is about when we'd hold our collective breaths and wait to see if the court comes down with a sensible ruling based on the likelihood of customer confusion, or if the court instead chooses the over-protectionist route, focusing on the common language and nothing else. In this case, Justice Luc Martineau appears to have gotten every last bit of it right.
Martineau said the first impression given by the label Cerveceria uses for its Pacifico brand "is of its obviously foreign origin" and that it's "highly stylized, with many distinctive design elements, including strong and contrasting colours and font in red, gold, blue, green and yellow." He further said the label "differs visually, phonetically, and semantically" from all of the marks PWB uses for its Pacific brands of beers.Let it all wash over you like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. The court took into account, in its words, the overall impression of the branding, which is another way of assessing the likelihood of customer confusion. Having found none, the judge then moved to dismiss PWB's case, stopping only briefly to ding them for claiming this was an issue after a couple of decade's worth of peaceful coexistance. Add to all of this the fairly common place a word like "Pacific" has in our parlance and it's easy to understand the judge's reasoning.
Martineau also dismissed as without merit PWB's argument that contrary to a statement on the register, Cerveceria del Pacifico was not first sold in Canada as early as April 1986.He noted that an affidavit from Cerveceria stating the beer was introduced at Expo '86, where it was sold at a Mexican restaurant called Ole Cantina, was not challenged by PWB counsel. By December 1989, Pacifico was listed with the B.C. Liquor Distribution branch and in August 1990, a registration protecting the mark was issued.
"The delay of almost 25 years before attempting to invalidate the registration weighs heavily against a finding of confusion," Martineau said of PWB's action.
Still, we've been stung enough to times to make this worth a brief bit of applause.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: branding, canada, confusion, pacific, pacifico, trademark
Companies: cerveceria, pwb
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And who owns Pacifico?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: And who owns Pacifico?
Grupo Modelo also exports Corona, Modelo and other bands.
Anheuser-Busch InBev owns Budweiser, Beck's, Bud Light, Skol, Brahma, Michelob Ultra and many other brands. It also owns SABMiller, whose brands include Fosters, Grolsch, Miller, Peroni and Pilsner Urquell.
But beyond that, no.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
But... but...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Hoist one for the judge!
I'll hoist a BAR HARBOR REAL ALE from the Atlantic Brewing Co. just to avoid confusion with all those west coast/Pacific ones.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obat Patah Tulang
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Mengatasi Penyakit Korengan
http://www.dsher-bal.com/2016/05/ob at-menghilangkan-nanah-dan-darah-pasca-operasi.html
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obat Herbal Setelah Operasi caesar
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obat Perawatan Luka
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obat Borok
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Obat Luka Gatal Bernanah
[ link to this | view in chronology ]