from the busch-league dept
Historically, stories we’ve covered here about the collision between the beer brewing industry and trademarks have largely been born of the creative nature of the craft beer industry specifically. Far different from the bland trade dress and naming conventions of the macro-brewing industry, the craft industry blended its beer-making with colorfully named brews and artistic art and imagery on the packaging. With all of that creativity at play, names and brands became far more elaborate and distinctive, giving rise to more trademark dispute action.
This one is different. This dispute is over a non-creative term that probably never should have been granted the broad trademark protection it has, a startup and politically conservative brewery making use of that same term, and the open question about whether the real concern is the trademark or the politics.
This all started with the ill-fated advertising campaign that partnered up the Bud Light brand and Dylan Mulvaney, an advocate for the transgender community. If you don’t recall what this was, I’ll summarize the stupidity for you. The beer giant made some cans of Bud Light that had Mulvaney’s face on it. Half the country shrugged and the other half lost their damned fool minds. Apparently this was all somehow a threat to someone, somewhere, and it needed the likes of Kid Rock to shoot Bud Light cans to stave off the threat. This is exactly as sane as the crowd that was shouting “Keep politics out of sports!” when athletes were kneeling during the — checks notes — National fucking Anthem. I’ve spent time in the past attempting to come up with a more perfect paradoxical statement than that and I’ve failed.
One of the reactions to the campaign was the creation of the Conservative Dad beer company. That company produces alcoholic beverages and spirits with exactly the sort of names you’re already imagining. There the Border Wall tequila, for instance. And its signature lager, named Ultra Right.
That last one had AB, which also owns Bud Light, opposing the brewery’s trademark application due to it owning ULTRA brand of beers and the trademarks for it.
“Applicant’s ULTRA RIGHT Mark is likely to cause confusion, to cause mistake or to deceive consumers with consequent injury to Opposer,” the beer giant, who is the opposer, continued, “The likelihood of confusion, mistake or deception that would also arise from concurrent use and registration of Applicant’s ULTRA RIGHT Mark with Anheuser-Busch’s use and registration of its ULTRA Marks is that (a) persons are likely to believe that Applicant’s products have their source in Opposer, or (b) that Applicant and its products are a version of Opposer’s ULTRA Marks or are in some way legitimately connected, associated or affiliated with, sponsored, approved, endorsed or licensed by Opposer when, in fact, they are not.”
Now, the folks over at Conservative Dad seem like the exact sort of folks I would not want to have a beer with. I can get enough of that vibe during family holidays, thank you very much. But just because I disagree with these folks on politics doesn’t mean the claims made by AB make any more sense.
AB does indeed have both word and design marks for all kinds of “ULTRA” related terms. Most of them make all the sense in the world to me, such as “Michelob ULTRA”. But why in the hell the USPTO granted word and design marks on the base word “ULTRA” is beyond me. That is a non-distinctive generic term that has all kinds of uses in the beer industry. Hell, there is a species of hops called the “ultra”, for love of Zeus.
The real work is getting that overly generic trademark canceled, at least as a word mark. Beyond that, it’s tough to see how anyone is going to get confused between these brands. The tradedress doesn’t look similar.
The names aren’t all that similar either, once we stipulate that “Ultra” is generic itself. The fonts aren’t the same, either. So, what is this actually all about?
“Anheuser-Busch is furious we helped expose their woke disaster with Bud Light, so now they’re using their billion-dollar legal machine in an attempt to financially bleed us dry. But unlike them, we’re not just a corporation looking to maximize profit — we’re a movement of Americans who have had enough.”
Oh, calm down, you make beer. But at the same time, if there isn’t a real trademark issue here, or at least not one born of likely customer confusion, then there are three likely posibilities. AB’s lawyers are wielding the broad trademark the company has because that’s what big companies do, regardless of anything else, AB’s lawyers have been instructed to do this because of the animosity the two breweries have for one another, or some combination of both.
Chances are the first of those is all or mostly right, I would say. But when companies go trademark bullying using marks that never should have been granted in the first place, particularly in this highly charged political environment, it’s no surprise to see the victim of the bullying pointing to politics as the cause.
So do I think the folks over at Conservative Dad kind of suck? Yeah, totally. Do I think it should be prevented from trademarking the name of its beer? Not at all. Trademark bullying sucks, too.
Filed Under: beer, bud light, dylan mulvaney, likelihood of confusion, trademark, ultra right
Companies: anheuser-busch, conservative dad
