Craft Beer Battles Rage On Over Trademarks

Bell’s Brewery, a Kalamazoo, Michigan brewery, filed an opposition with the U.S. Trademark Trials and Appeals Board against Innovation Brewing’s attempt to trademark “Innovation Brewing.” Bell’s Brewery asserts rights in the unregistered slogan – “bottling innovation since 1985” – which Bell’s uses on bumper stickers. Additionally, Bell’s asserts that it uses the slogan “inspired brewing,” which is confusingly similar to Innovation Brewing’s name. Accordingly, Bell’s argues that the similarity between the Innovation Brewing name and the Bell’s slogans is “likely to cause confusion and mistake, and to deceive and mislead consumers into believing that (Innovation Brewing’s) beverages originated, are sponsored by, are licensed from, or are jointly owned by or otherwise associated with (Bell’s) and/or (Bell’s) goods marked with its Inspired Brewing trademark.”

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In addition to Thriving Attorney, Darin M. Klemchuk is founder of Klemchuk LLP, a litigation, intellectual property, and transactional law firm located in Dallas, Texas.  He also co-founded Project K, a charity devoted to changing the world one random act of kindness at a time.  Click to read more about Darin Klemchuk's practice as an intellectual property lawyer.