Budweiser dispute
The Budweiser dispute became known as one of the longest and most comprehensive intercontinental trademark disputes. Two breweries, each exporting worldwide, on the one hand the Budějovický Budvar brewery from Budweis in the Czech Republic and on the other hand the Anheuser Busch Group from the USA , each take the view that priority rights to the Budweiser and Bud brand names should be retained . The clarification of who holds the older rights to the brand has been a work of several courts around the world for over a hundred years and is sometimes very laborious individual steps. So far, the Czech brewery has won the majority of these processes.
Starting position
In the USA, Eberhard Anheuser's son-in-law Adolf Busch, of German descent, brewed beer with the name Budweiser from 1876 . With the purchase of the brewery in 1891, Carl Conrad also acquired his trademark “Budweiser Lagerbier”, which was registered in 1878. In 1907, Anheuser-Busch also registered the “Budweiser” trademark with the American Trademark Office , which triggered the legal disputes, and has since been gradually striving to acquire these trademark rights worldwide.
Like Anheuser-Busch, the Bohemian Budweiser Brewery, founded in 1895 as a share brewery , argues with the older name right. Together with the locally competing but internationally allied Budweiser Bürgerbräu , Anheuser-Busch has been litigated since 1907.
Development so far
The Budweiser Bürgerbräu had been exporting its beer to North America since the 1870s. After the Bohemian stock brewery, which that year surpassed the Bürgerbräu in terms of beer output for the first time, also appeared on the US market, Anheuser-Busch registered the “Budweiser” brand in the USA. In 1911 the first agreements between the parties involved were concluded. In 1917 it was agreed that Anheuser-Busch would only be allowed to use the name Budweiser in North America, but in return undertook to purchase the hops for brewing from the Bohemian Budweis. Anheuser-Busch then used the name - but without a single hop umbel leaving Budweis in the direction of Missouri . The Budweiser eventually went to court. Anheuser-Busch defended himself in The Hague with the argument that Budweiser beer had been brewing since 1876, while the Budvar brewery was only founded in 1895. For its part, the Budvar brewery countered that its name goes back to the city of Budweis, founded in 1265, which has had it since the 13th century, i.e. a time 200 years before Christopher Columbus discovered America .
In 1937, the Bohemian joint stock brewery registered its trademark in the United States, which sparked new disputes. Under threat of confiscation of their transatlantic goods, the two Budweiser breweries made concessions and recognized the rights of Anheuser-Busch in the United States.
In 1978 the American brewing group made the nationalized South Bohemian brewing operations ( Jihočeské pivovary ), into which Budvar and Bürgerbräu had merged from 1945 to 1948, the offer to take over the Budweiser trademark rights for all of Europe. The Czechoslovak Republic as the owner refused, which resulted in a series of legal proceedings in Europe.
In 1989, after the Velvet Revolution , the next offer followed. The pending international court proceedings were suspended during the negotiations, but were resumed in 1996 after the negotiations failed.
When it joined the EU in 2004, the Czech Republic made a mistake from a trademark law perspective: only Czech-language beer brands such as Budějovické pivovar or Budějovický městanský , but not Budweiser, were entered in the EU register. In Ceske Budejovice, however, they insist on the recognition of the brand as a regional EU designation of origin, in order to additionally secure themselves at least in the European market. According to EU agreements, place names can only be registered as trademarks by local manufacturers, so the Czechs are the legal owners of the “Budweiser” or “Budějovický” brand. The geographical names Budweiser and Budějovický should also be protected under the GATT / TRIPS agreement of the WTO (ratified by 150 countries) . Similar attempts to protect the names Pils , Pilsner and Pilsener have regularly failed for a long time, but the prospects for the term Budweiser are greater because, unlike "Pilsner", it is not a type of beer with a special brewing method.
When the Americans forced their way onto the European market with the short form Bud , the Bitburger brewery filed an objection that Bud was too close to Bit , the abbreviation for their beer, which is also registered as a trademark. On October 19, 2006, the European Court of First Instance dismissed the complaint on the grounds that there was no likelihood of confusion with regard to the short names.
According to a press release on Budweiser Budvar's American website, it was agreed in 2007 that Anheuser-Busch would be allowed to sell Czech beer on the American market under the name Czechvar for a license fee that has not yet been determined . The decades-long legal dispute is over in at least the USA and Canada.
In March 2009, Anheuser-Busch's appeal against the decision of the EU Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Trademarks, Designs and Models) (OHIM) not to register the Budweiser brand for Anheuser-Busch across the EU was rejected . The court pointed out that Budějovický Budvar had proven that this trademark had been used at least five years before Anheuser-Busch's application for registration of an EU-wide trademark. The decision also applies to non-alcoholic malt beverages (e.g. non-alcoholic beer). On July 29, 2010, Anheuser-Busch also lost the final appeal against this decision. This means that Anheuser-Busch is not allowed to use the Budweiser name as an EU-wide trademark for beer.
In 2012, Anheuser-Busch achieved a coup when it took over one of its two previous competitors, Budweiser Bürgerbräu. Its owner, Harvestor, had previously outsourced the Samson brewery production. Anheuser-Busch thus de facto only took over the trademark rights.
On January 22nd, 2013, the court of the European Union ruled that within the EU the abbreviation “Bud” is only available for the US product. The Czech brewery had previously had this name legally protected in several EU countries (including France and Austria), but it did not use this protected name enough, as the court argued. The full name "Budweiser", however, still belongs to Budweiser-Budvar.
Current status
The Budweiser brand is used differently in different regions (as of 2018).
In the United Kingdom , both Anheuser-Busch and Budějovický Budvar are registered as owners of the “Budweiser” trademark. This is due to a peculiarity of British trademark law, that two users can register a trademark or two confusingly similar trademarks in the case of honest concurrent use or in the presence of other special circumstances. The European Court of Justice ruled on September 22, 2011 that this regulation does not violate Union law. Both manufacturers have been selling beers in the UK for over 30 years under the name “Budweiser”, which differ so much in terms of taste, appearance and price that British consumers perceive both beers as separate brands.
In the USA and Canada, Anheuser-Busch owns the Budweiser trademark rights . The Czech Budweiser is sold there as Czechvar , while Anheuser-Busch's beer in Europe is mostly offered as Anheuser-Busch Bud or American Bud .
In all other regions of the world, the Czech Budweiser is sold as Budweiser , Budvar , Budějovický Budvar or Budweiser Budvar . In Germany and Austria in particular, only Budějovický Budvar is allowed to use the Budweiser brand .
literature
- Winfried Dimmel: The Budweiser Aktienbrauerei and the construction of the National. Brewing industry in the field of tension between economic nationalism and cutthroat competition. In: Writings on social and economic history. Volume 29. Hamburg 2017. ISBN 978-3-8300-9298-8 , 197 pages (especially section 5.1 David versus Goliath - more than a hundred years of trademark dispute. Pp. 119–124).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Dimmel 2017, p. 121f
- ↑ a b Dimmel 2017, p. 122
- ↑ a b c Dimmel 2017, p. 123
- ^ Judgment of the Court of First Instance (Fifth Chamber) of October 19, 2006. Bitburger Brewery Th. Simon GmbH v Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (Brands, Designs and Models) (OHIM) .
- ^ Anheuser-Busch and Czech Brewer Budejovicky Budvar Form Historic Alliance in US Market. January 8, 2007, at anheuser-busch.com (English).
- ^ Court of First Instance of the European Communities: Press release No. 25/09. Judgment of the General Court in Case T-191/07 Anheuser-Busch , Inc. v OHIM, 25 March 2009, ( PDF; 151 kB on europa.eu).
- ↑ Court of Justice of the European Union: Press Release No. 77/10. Judgment in Case C-214/09 P Anheuser-Busch Inc. v OHIM and Budějovický Budvar, národni podnik. Luxembourg 29 July 2010, ( PDF; 124 kB on europa.eu).
- ↑ Anheuser-Busch thirsts for Budweiser. on absatzwirtschaft.de, the article by Simone Brunner, which is only available on archiv.is, is quoted: Anheuser-Busch buys the “Budweiser Bier” brand. Takeover. Anheuser-Busch takes over the Czech Budweiser Bürgerbrauerei and secures the “Budweiser Bier” brand ( Memento from May 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ). Wirtschaftsblatt, January 12, 2012.
- ↑ EU judgment: A “Bud” is not a “Budweiser”. New verdict in the dispute between the Czech Budweiser brewery and Anheuser-Bush: Only the US giant is allowed to call its beer “Bud” in the EU. January 22, 2013, on diepresse.com.
- ↑ Judgment of the Court of the European Union of 22 September 2011 in Case C-482/09 Budějovický Budvar, národní podnik against Anheuser-Busch Inc. .