Brewery Looks To Reform Trademark Practices After Its Lawyers Bully A Pub Over Its Name

from the the-blame-game dept

As is commonly said, mistakes happen and it's what we do about those mistakes that is important. Too often when the mistakes are concerning trademark bullying, there is nothing done to acknowledge or address that bullying. The bully will simply state the oft-repeated excuse that they must bully according to trademark law, which isn't remotely the case. And, because there is no acknowledgement that anything was done wrong, the bullying then continues.

Well, after a recent dust-up over trademarks between BrewDog, a self-styled "punk brewery," and a family-owned pub, it seems that the brewery is actually going all in on reforming how it approaches trademark issues, and even intellectual property more generally.

The brother-and-sister team behind the Wolf pub in Birmingham were forced to drop their original plan to name the establishment the Lone Wolf, after receiving a legal warning from BrewDog, which has launched a spirit bearing the same name. But BrewDog founder James Watt announced a change of heart on Monday after the Guardian’s report sparked a backlash that saw the firm, a vocal critic of large, faceless brewing firms, accused of acting like “just another multinational corporate machine”.

Watt had initially tweeted that the brewery's lawyers got "trigger happy" and that the bar could keep using the name. That was on March 27th, although that tweet appears, as best as I can tell, to have been deleted since. In its place were assurances to Watt's followers that all had ended well.

Along with that came a blog post from BrewDog explaining that it had to enforce its trademarks, but both promising to do so more leniently and stating that the company doesn't actually take intellectual property all that seriously.

In terms of the Lone Wolf Bar in Birmingham, we paid for and trademarked Lone Wolf in 2015. The Lone Wolf Bar in Birmingham opened in January of 2017. Our wider team and legal partners, acting entirely in our best interests informed them that we owned the name and they would have to stop using it. Just as we'd do if someone opened a bar called BrewDog.

However, hands up, we made a mistake here in how we acted. Almost all companies always look to enforce trademarks, whereas at BrewDog we should take the view to only enforce if something really detrimental to our business is happening. And here, I do not think that was the case. As soon as I found out, I reversed the decision and offered to cover all of the costs of the bar. I also invited them up to Ellon to make their own gin with us. This is a mistake that hurt a lot; but like all mistakes, it made us better. This will not happen again.

Going even further than that, the brewery has taken the somewhat extraordinary step to publicly release its brew recipes on its own website. Were a company to want to demonstrate more perfectly its commitment to not being an overbearing bully on matters of intellectual property, I'm not sure how they could do a better job of it than this. Working with the former target of the company's lawyers, publicly explaining what happened to its customers and everyone else, and releasing the recipes for its brews publicly for anyone to download: this is a commitment to being open and cool to customers and businesses.

Keep in mind that BrewDog could have simply shouted the mantra of having to protect its trademarks at everyone. We here wouldn't have bought that, because we know better, but that tactic must surely work to some degree given how often it is deployed. That BrewDog went another route is a good thing that should be celebrated.

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: james watt, trademark, trademark bullying
Companies: brewdog, wolf pub