Brooklyn Brewery vs Sixpoint over "BKLYN"

Well, even if by that they mean "the largest brew [ing company with corporate headquarters located] in New York..." and thus eliminating St. Louis-based AB's 7.6 million barrel capacity Baldwinsville, NY brewery, there's still NAB's Genesee brewery which has a capacity of 4 million bbl/yr. NAB's, which also has the US rights for the imported Labatt brand (and which, doubtless, is their largest brand), barrelage is typically listed as a combined figure of both their imports and US-brewed beers (other Labatt labels, Genesee, Dundee, Magic Hat, Pyramid, Portland, etc) for a total over 2.5 million bbl., but I'd imagine their US brands still outsell Brooklyn's 252,000 bbl (2014). Genesee was said to be brewing around 500k-1m bbl.* when sold to the newly created NAB in 2009, IIRC.

* Varied due to whether one counted their contract-brews, I'd guess.​

And, of course, Brooklyn only passed F X Matt's barrelage in 2013 while having a good portion of their brews beer AT Matt (as noted). Combined with Matt's other contract-brews (some Pabst brands, the old Ferolito and Vultaggio (Arizona Iced Tea) Mississippi Mud brand, etc) one would imagine they still brew more beer than Brooklyn does.

 

Could very well mean NY the city as opposed to state. Brooklyn must be the biggest brewery headquartered in NY the city.

 

Yeah, I considered that but the sentence before it they noted that it was "...a New York corporation..." as well as listing its "Citizenship" as "New York" on page 1.

 

When they say largest in NY & one of larges in US, it reads like they mean New York State not just NYC. They might have meant largest craft brewery, but dropped craft rather than try to define the term. Which lead to the misleading sentence that we're now discussing. Or they may look at North American Breweries as a conglomerate that manufactures many labels, and not as a single brewery. It may have to do with the TTB registration they're using; perhaps NAB is technically rotating through using each separate brand's registration and thus breaking their overall size as a brewer into smaller chucks. If we asked them they'd probably offer an interpretation that made sense to them at least. Or it's just shoddy brief writing.

That said, I don't think this quibble goes to the heart of the dispute. I don't think there is any debate as to the relative sizes of the two parties; Brooklyn Brewery is larger than Sixpoint, period. The issue in the case is whether Sixpoint can trademark "BKLYN", not whether Brooklyn is the largest brewer in NY State.

 

Not going to try to decipher all the legal jargon, but I fully defend Brooklyn in this suit. The Brooklyn Brewery was instrumental in growing my love for craft beer and have been around far longer than Sixpoint.

Many here have said that Sixpoint does in fact brew in Brooklyn, but I was under the impression that all of their beer is brewed in TN. Regardless, that doesn't seem to be the dispute here. So I won't comment further on that other than the transparency would be nice.

Rather, the issue lies in Sixpoint's use of BKLYN and its similarity to Brooklyn Brewery's. Brooklyn has been using their logo since the late 80s and has the full right to defend their case.

Gavel smashes on desk...

 

Who said it did? But their law firm saw fit to include the dubious, inexact and totally irrelevant claim in their petition to cancel Sixpoint's trademark - so I felt I had as much right to comment on it in an internet forum.

I'd say the "largest brewer in New York (State)" is Anheuser-Busch, while the "largest New York (State) brewer" is North American Breweries, Inc.

 

Ok, but what about FIFCO (Florida Ice & Farm Company; Florida not referring to the US state as they're Costa Rican) owing NAB? Shouldn't that make them another brewery owned by a foreign corporation (be it out of state or other country), and thus no different (and eclipsed by) ABI's Baldwinsville brewery? I believe Matt is third in line by capacity, and thus by this definition should be the "largest New York (State) brewer". Unless we are looking at barrellage produced by one brand, in which case Brooklyn may get the nod.

To be clear, I agree the petition's wording is problematic. Probably more so to craft beer nerds such as ourselves than to the trademark office. And while I'm interested in discussing NY brewers from an academic standpoint, I'm more interested in who has the stronger claim to BKLYN.

 

The conventional way to list the geographic "home" of multi-site or foreign-owned brewing companies in the US has always been by their US corporate headquarters (usually, but not always, also where their primary, original or flagship brewery is) - and that is still the case. See for example the Brewers Association's Top 50 lists - AB is in St. Louis, not Belgium, MillerCoors is in Chicago, not Golden or Milwaukee, nor Montreal or London, Mendocino is listed as "CA" not India, etc.

That was the case when Carling-National was owned by Canadian brewer Carling-O'Keefe or when Latrobe (Rolling Rock) was owned by Labatt and then InBev or Fred Koch was owned by Vaux. They were not considered Canadian or Belgian or UK brewers, despite being wholly-owned by a foreign brewery. Nor is NAB, a US brewing company formed in 2009, headquartered in Rochester, NY, considered Costa Rican simply because they were eventually bought by FIFCO.

AB's Baldwinsville brewery, on the other hand, is merely a branch brewery of St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Belgian-based AB-InBev), brewing the same brands as the other 11 AB breweries in the US.

Ummm... the way I read this thread, you comment on, and then replied to my posts.