Left Hand Brewing seeks to trademark "Nitro"

There is very little chance that this will be successful and it's terrible publicity. Dumb move IMHO

 

Or Bass which has used the name "Pale Ale" since 1777
I would have thought that to register a trademark there should have to be some sort of originality.Fuller's originated the term ESB yet many other brewers use it.

 

Or "Nightro" ?

 

Danny Lee Clark will not be happy about this.

Hopefully someone gets this reference.

 

Nitro beers are awful anyhow...let them have it.

 

quick, @Pipeworks, trademark the word Citra!

 

As a trademark lawyer that works with breweries, I'm surprised that the application made it to the publication stage without an Office Action rejecting the application as merely descriptive, i.e., you can't register trademarks for terms that merely describe the associated goods or services. A mark is considered merely descriptive if it describes an ingredient, quality, characteristic, function, feature, purpose, or use of the specified goods or services (TMEP). NITRO is short for nitrogen which is a feature of the goods, i.e., beer, in question.

 

Who's going to trademark, "Hops?"

 

This threw me as well. The word "Nitro" is pretty plainly descriptive. It would be like pursuing a trademark for "Light."

 

Surprised it took this long for someone to explain this. Trademarks are words; no originality or inventiveness needed

 

I haven't read the entire thread, so apologies if others have made this point -- since Nitro is not only the trademarked name of their beer but also a term commonly used to describe a method of delivery, it would be akin to naming a beer 'Canned' or 'Bottled' or 'Draft' or 'Bomber' or you get the point...and then trademarking that and seeking to stop others from using that word in their name. Seems like a stretch, but I guess that's how lawyers get paid.

 

Miller actually did attempt to lock down "light" in the 1970s. The Seventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1977 ruled, “We hold that, because ‘light’ is a generic or common descriptive word when applied to beer, neither that word nor its phonetic equivalent may be appropriated as a trademark for beer.”

http://www.metnews.com/articles/2005/reminiscing092905.htm

 

And I have a suspicion that the same will happen with "Nitro." Taken as a whole, Milk Stout Nitro is probably a different story, but "Nitro" alone seems like too much. It never hurts to apply though...

 

How about SN's Knightro? http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/140/72925

 

Interestingly, Oskar Blues filed a trademark application for G'Knightro on March 5th. Doesn't look descriptive to me given the purposeful misspelling of "nitro" and the G'.