Cerveceria Costa Rica (Magic Hat) Suing West Sixth Brewing

Disney is calling their lawyers right now.

 

Haha, wow! They should fire their unoriginal, plagiarist artists.

 

One of the owners of West Sixth is currently doing a Reddit AMA, if anyone wants to grill him...

http://www.reddit.com/r/beer/comments/1ex09u/hi_im_ben_one_of_the_cofounders_of_west_sixth_the/

 

Is Panopticon in here?

 

9296 bro!

 

I think the breakdown was on the use of the six without text going forward. They up thru yesterday said they would change the star to something more compassy looking. Although, honestly, as it isnt in the Magic Hat trademark, I cant imagine that being a big deal one way or another.

 

Thats not how negotiations work.

Until its agreed to by both parties, not one has any responsibility to follow thru on any suggestion. You get it in writing THEN you follow thru. But them amending the star depended on Magic Hat agreeing to their terms too, there is no unilateral disarming in business.

 

Only if you didnt read the Bill James essay I linked to in some other thread the other day.

Stop trying to reduce things to a single factor. I said the math was a big factor, not the only one.

 

I think those kind of "college type kids" wouldnt misrecognize it as Magic Hat because the logo doesnt have a psychedelic feel to it. The "vibe" is entirely different.

 

I like how West 6th never answers any questions or statements that call them out reneging on their earlier offer to remove the compass/dingbat or accusations that they pulled this PR stunt on purpose to boost sales.

Someone said this Reddit conversation can't be good for an upcoming court case either because it could be used as evidence against them, which echoes Jason's comments earlier in this thread. No lawyer worth anything would advise them to discuss a lawsuit publically on Reddit. This whole thing is a PR stunt for West 6th. I don't think they planned to infringe on the trademark initially, but they are certainly getting everything they can out of it now that the opportunity has presented itself. I'm actually impressed that made such a savy business move. But they better settle soon though or Magic Hat could decide a defamation suit is in order. There's only so long you can poke a lion.

 

I've explained my position about the 6 and the star repeatedly and in detail, and if you still aren't able to follow the timeline of the negotiations than perhaps it isn't worth further effort on my part. I'll just point out, one more time, that the fact that "They up thru yesterday said they would change the star" is entirely irrelevant to the question of what caused negotiations to break down, since their offer yesterday was a return to an earlier negotiating position that they themselves refused to honor in the final letter they sent before the lawsuit.

Here's a radically simplified summary of West Sixth's handling of the star issue:

Letter 1: We'll remove or change the star.
Letter 2: We're going to change the star; please promise not to object to whatever we change it to.
Letter 3: You won't promise that you're ok with something we haven't shown you? Then screw it, it's expensive anyway, so we won't change it after all. Never mind what we said earlier.
Post-Lawsuit: Never mind what we said earlier. We're totally willing to change it. Here are some options for you to look at, Magic Hat. Will one of these work?

Can you see why someone might not have been happy negotiating with West Sixth? First they make a reasonable offer, then a completely unreasonable demand (did they seriously expect Magic Hat to approve something they hadn't seen?), then they renege on their offer. Only after being sued do they try to convince people that their offer has been on the table the whole time, and it's Magic Hat being the unreasonable ones.

Apparently their spin has worked on you, but I honestly don't understand how.

 

The last bastards in the world who should be talking about ripping off labels.

 

hmm, using an idea from a movie, or a painting, for a beer label is hell of a lot different the ripping off someone elses beer label for a beer label. Trademarks work within industries. For example you could make car company and call it Magic Car and they would not sue you, but, if you made Magic brand beer they would sue you. If a beer company copies their label they should sue. If a skateboard company had a similar logo they would not sue. You (and that article) are comparing apples to oranges.

 

I think Magic Hat should crawl in their Friggin magic hat and vanish, what a bunch of Petty A$$H____
Grow Up!!!!!

 

OMG! Copied from Reddit:

[Note: initialbegbie = Ben, a co-founder of West 6th Brewing]
underlining by me for emphasis

That is like, so, uncool! Let me repeat it for you in case you missed it...in the middle of copyright negotiations they released a new beer with the same disputed logo in the same color scheme (orange) as Magic Hat's! Everyone just think for a second...if you were Magic Hat dealing with crap like that, what would you do?

Enough is enough....I was critical of West 6th before, but that's it for me! A legit business doesn't pull that sort of crap in the midst of negotiations on top of their bad faith reneging, which we've already discussed to death. Then they prepare this social media campaign of half-truths and omissions to smear Magic Hat and boost their sales. Magic Hat was only protecting their copyrighted property and never went about this with the goal to hurt or defame another company, but clearly West 6th doesn't have the same courtesy. No business large or small, craft brewer or not, should get away with shit like this. It's a terrible precedent to set if a brewer can publicly defame another brewer, benefit from temporarily boosted sales/attention, and all they have to do is change/phase-out a logo. I hope that this goes to court [even though know it won't] and I want Magic Hat to dump a defamation suit on them too. I want to see Magic Hat crush West 6th in the worst way. I mean like christians vs lions in the Roman Colosseum sort of destruction.

Here's Beer Advocate first for y'all: I plan to support Magic Hat's cause with my next beer purchase!

 

The damage to Magic Hat has already been done.

 

I didn't go through the 10 pages, so here's the Amber

 

I figured!!

 

Enjoy your crappy beer.