Heaven Hill Distillery Knocks On Bob Dylan's Door Over His Heaven's Door Whiskey For Trademark Infringement

from the drunk-in-a-hurry dept

Trademark disputes in the alcohol industries are often times absurd enough to make the comments section question whether everyone involved was simply drunk. While I'm sure the lawyers on all sides tend to be sober, every once in a while you read a claim in a big-boy legal document that makes you pause and wonder. And, then, sometimes the dispute centers around a public figure punning off his own notoriety, making the trademark claims extra ludicrous.

Meet Bob Dylan. Bob used to be a counterculture folksinger hero that eschewed the trappings of materialism and sang as one of the original social justice warriors. Present day Bob sings songs on car commercials and owns a Whiskey brand. And, hey, Bob's allowed to make money, no matter how jarring this might be to those born decades ago. His Heaven's Door Whiskey is, sigh, allowed to exist. It's also allowed to fight back against the absurd trademark lawsuit brought by Heaven's Hill Distillery over its logo and trade dress.

Heaven Hill Distillery has filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against Heaven’s Door Spirits, a whiskey line co-owned by Dylan that was released earlier this year. The company's name is a reference to Dylan’s 1973 song Knockin' on Heaven’s Door.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Louisville, argues that the Bardstown-based company was founded by the Shapira family shortly after prohibition ended in the 1930s and has used the trademark for more than 80 years. A Heaven Hill attorney sent a cease-and-desist letter to Chicago-based Heaven’s Door in April, saying the start-up distillery’s use of its trademark “will create a likelihood of confusion” with the Kentucky bourbon brand's products. The letter specifically notes that Heaven's Door has introduced a “stacked" logo similar to the one used by Heaven Hill.

Dylan's company responded saying it didn't believe there would be any public confusion over the logos and trade dress and that it wasn't going to be making any of the changes requested. When it comes to these disputes, it's useful to actually put the entire products next to one another to see how similar they are. Simple logos can sometimes be squinted at and seen as similar, but on the question of confusion in the marketplace you really have to put the products side by side and imagine yourself in a store trying to decide between the two. I've done that for you below.

It's frankly hard to imagine how anyone is going to be confused between these two liquor brands. The bottle shape is different. The label placement is different. The fonts aren't the same and neither are the color schemes for the labels. Even the logos themselves aren't particularly similar, stacked or otherwise. And, of course, there is the mockup of the ironwork sculpting on Dylan's bottle, modeled after his own iron sculpting artwork. Even the name of the brand is a reference to Dylan. How any of this adds up to market confusion is beyond me.

And, yet, Heaven Hill essentially wants to scuttle Dylan's whiskey business altogether.

The lawsuit is asking a judge to grant a temporary injunction prohibiting Heaven’s Door from producing, distributing or marketing until the lawsuit is concluded. In addition, attorneys for Heaven Hill want a judge to force Heaven’s Door to “deliver up for destruction or other disposition all goods, packaging, containers, advertisements, promotions, signs, displays” with their company name.The suit is also seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Somehow, despite this suit, I would guess that Dylan's whiskey will continue to be released.

Filed Under: bob dylan, heaven, trademark, whiskey
Companies: heaven's door whiskey, heaven's hill distillery

DailyDirt: Beverage Marketing At Its Highest... Altitudes?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Putting all sorts of things into space to see how they'll react in a micro-gravity environment has been done for decades now. Sometimes, it's really unpredictable what exactly will happen to stuff -- eg. will seeds exposed to space grow differently? But some things are not really too consequential. Do whisky drinkers really care if their favorite beverages are aged in space? Are astronauts allowed to get drunk on the International Space Station?

• Ardbeg Scottish whisky aged in space for 3 years has been tasted (finally!) by human beings, and it looks like space-aged whisky is somewhat nasty. Lots of fancy adjectives were used to qualitatively describe this whisky that we mentioned 3 years ago, but the aftertaste was "intense and long, with hints of wood, antiseptic lozenges and rubbery smoke" -- and "rubbery smoke" doesn't sound too appealing. [url]
• American whiskeys and bourbons have a history of tricky marketing tactics. Aging these alcoholic beverages or producing them in smaller quantities doesn't necessarily make them any better, and the name on the labels might not actually mean much beyond a "doing business as" moniker. [url]
• The Japanese distillery Suntory will be sending its own whisky to the International Space Station to "observe" the effects of aging its product in space. This probably isn't about the scientific exploration of whisky chemistry as much as it is marketing, but maybe someday, we'll see more ads with Bill Murray shot in space with more intensity. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: advertising, bill murray, bourbon, international space station, iss, marketing, microgravity, space, taste, whiskey, whisky
Companies: ardbeg, suntory

DailyDirt: Food Plus...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The world is full of restaurants and chefs striving to make a mark with a new culinary concoction, but centuries of everyone on the planet eating every day has largely covered all the bases. The easiest way to come up with something new is to take something popular and add something unexpected to it, like so:

• An Iowa distillery is raising whiskey-infused pigs by feeding them spent-grain mash. The goal? Whiskey bacon, of course. [url]
• A British ice cream maker has combined Champagne and Viagra to create his new flavor, "The Arousal". Yes, it's real Viagra, so no, it's not generally available — it was a custom creation for a celebrity client. [url]
• There's barely anything that someone hasn't tried adding to pizza, though there are many who debate the need for these wild experiments. Whatever your tastes, this list of 50 pizzas — one from each state — should give you plenty of options. [url]

If you'd like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: bacon, food, ice cream, pizza, viagra, whiskey

Vicious Cycle: When Those Abused By Trademark Abuse Others With Trademark

from the neverending-story dept

There's a theory I learned in my college psychology classes about the nature of abusers and their victims, and what are the best criteria for predicting if a person will become an abuser. While the causes and histories of abusers are as varied as you'd expect, the general thought was that the best predictor for finding a future abuser was whether that person had been abused themselves. The study topics of that class centered around emotional, physical, and sexual abusers, but I see no reason why we can't apply the theory to other types of "abuse."

Say, trademark, for instance. Is someone who was bullied long ago over a trademark more likely to bully others in the same manner? I'm not sure, of course, but here's one anectodal instance of a small liquor marketer who felt the stern hand of a trademark bully long ago and has since turned to that tactic himself. Let's start off by examining the patient's history, shall we?

In 2000, [Andre] Levy launched a whiskey brand called Wild Geese. To Levy and his Irish wife Mairade, who live in Switzerland, the brand clearly evoked the story of 17th century Irish soldiers, known as the Wild Geese, who fled to France at the end of a war with the English. Pernod Ricard (RI:FP), the spirits company that owned Wild Turkey bourbon at the time, thought the new brand looked like a trademark violation. Levy, like the Irish soldiers that inspired him, eventually capitulated before a more powerful opponent. In 2008, he added the phrase “Irish Soldiers and Heroes” to the name on bottles sold in the U.S., which he says sufficiently distinguished it from the other wild fowl-branded booze. He later added the tagline “Untamed,” registering the mark with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office in 2011.

So, here we see the "abuse." Now, just to be clear, I don't mean to equate trademark disputes with personal abuse. They're obviously not the same thing and this is obviously an incredibly imperfect analogy. That said, seen through the lens of that analogy, one might expect that going through what had to be quite a frustrating experience with Wild Turkey acting the absolute fool and stomping on the little guy (classic abuser behavior) could be an indicator that Levy would cycle into becoming an abuser himself. And, in my estimation, that's exactly what he did. Remember that "Untamed" trademark?

Last year, Bacardi sought to register the phrase “Bacardi Untameable” with the USPTO. Levy filed an objection and hopes to persuade the trademark office that Bacardi’s application, if approved, would violate his existing mark. In addition to his formal objection, Levy launched a website that asks visitors to rally lawmakers and bartenders to his cause. His tone is blustery: “Bacardi’s actions are a danger to all entrepreneurs and to Irish heritage,” the website says.

Like the earlier case, this seems to be a case of trademark over-protectionism. Customer confusion appears quite unlikely, given the plain branding with Bacardi's name on the bottle and its status within the industry. It's also quite likely that the marketing teams at Bacardi had no idea Levy and his whiskey brand even existed. Yet, here we are, with a trademark dispute and overblown claims about Bacardi endangering "all entrepreneurs" and "Irish heritage." Please.

But that's what happens in these abuse cycles. Rationality is done away with by the past and common sense is replaced by senses of anger and loss. Again, not a perfect analogy, but should you take a moment to examine the neverending march towards more protectionism of intellectual property, this pattern or cycle of victims turning into abusers fits like a jigsaw piece in just the right puzzle.

Filed Under: abuse, trademark, untameable, untamed, whiskey, wild geese
Companies: bacardi