Welcome to another in my ongoing series of posts on craft beer trademark battles. This one is a little different from the rest.
Hood River, Oregon’s Full Sail Brewing is best known for its Session Lager, which, according to their website, “comes in a stubby, 11-oz bottle like your grandpa used to buy.” Well, not my grandfather, maybe yours.
Full Sail recently filed a complaint for trademark infringement and dilution against Georgia-based The Sessions Law Firm, LLC (we’ll call them “Sessions Law”). What does a brewery have to do with a law firm?
Full Sail owns six US trademark registrations that include the word “SESSION,” along with one registration for the design of their logo. Here’s their logo, below the logo of the law firm:
Interesting, right? The complaint alleges that Sessions Law markets and sells its services to beer drinkers online and “on a paper bag designed and distributed for the express purpose of holding a can or bottle of beer.” They go on to state that the law firm “creates a direct and malicious connection between FULL SAIL’s goods, namely beer, and DUI (Driving Under the Influence).”
Full Sail sued for both trademark infringement and dilution. The infringement claim is tricky. Full Sail has exclusive rights to use that logo in connection with beer and related goods and services. But law firm services are clearly unrelated. Trademark infringement claims are based on likelihood of confusion. Would a consumer really be confused as to the source of the services? Or, to put it another way, would a beer drinker see the law firm’s logo and think, gee, I didn’t know that brewery was a law firm, too? Maybe not – although there’s no question the marks are so similar that there is no possibility it was a coincidence, and a consumer could at least assume that Full Sail had licensed the logo or otherwise entered into an agreement with the law firm.
The dilution claim is more clear. Trademark dilution is a claim by a trademark owner that the use of the mark by the defendant would diminish the goodwill embodied in the trademark – even if the defendant is not using the mark in connection with similar goods or services. There’s no question the goodwill in Full Sail’s marks could be diminished by association with a DUI law firm.
I wonder why Full Sail didn’t also set forth a claim of copyright infringement. Presumably, they own the copyright in the graphic work embodied in their logo. If not, they should get that straightened out. Nonetheless, this case is pretty much a slam dunk for Full Sail, and I can’t even imagine what Sessions Law was thinking (or drinking) when they came up with this idea.
The takeaway here is obvious – don’t rip off another company’s name and logo and expect to get away with it.
