Trademarks and Beer Labels: Research First and Avoid a Lawsuit
Trademarks are one of the single most important legal issues your brewery might ever deal with. Ideally, you should register for a trademark for your brewery’s name, logo, each individually named beer you create, and each beer’s unique logo. But before you go forward with registering any of these, you should have an attorney conduct a full search for any prior existing names or logos that might be similar or identical to your proposed mark. There are a number of different places to look and an experienced trademark attorney will be able to find anything similar (regardless of whether the prior existing mark is registered with the USPTO).
The craft beer industry is growing, countrywide and especially in North Carolina, so new beer names and logos are being created every day. Therefore, your new imperial stout’s might require a little extra creativity. Additionally, although beer, wine and spirits (liquor) are three separate classes of marks with the USPTO, the USPTO considers these “related products” and so a wine or liquor with a substantially similar name to your proposed beer name may be found to cause confusion (and therefore, be the basis for a lawsuit).
If you plan to create a new beer soon, and already have the name for your new beer, make sure to have a trademark search done immediately. If the name is available, the law allows you the register for the mark without even having used the mark in commerce (stating that you have an intent to use the mark). With the expanding craft beer industry, expedience in researching, and subsequently registering your trademark will serve two major purposes: (1) researching ahead of time will help you to avoid being sued for infringing on a similar trademark (i.e., will save you a lot of time, suffering, and most importantly, money) and (2) registering ahead of time will ensure adequate protection of your beer name and logo from trademark infringement by another craft brewer (ensuring you the ability to be compensated if someone else steals your mark).
