I normally like The Wall Street Journal but wow a recent editorial about “The Craft Beer Cops” was a letdown. I am not sure it is even worthy of a college newspaper, or one of the Journal’s interns. I don’t see any new points and I certainly don’t see any ideas for how to more properly regulate the industry. It has the feel of Trumpism; a few guys said it’s bad, and that becomes sufficient evidence that it’s a yuge disaster. I don’t want to paste the whole editorial because it’s behind a paywall, so I tried to repeat only the worst half, as below within the block quotes.

You might think of a microbrewery as a home for free spirits who grow long beards, take their dogs to work, and make their own rules. But Washington won’t let them. …

This seems a dumb place to start. Does anyone really think each brewer should do entirely as they wish? I doubt it. So it’s really a question of which rules are good, not whether. Not to mention that there is plenty of evidence that many of the brewers like the rules and helped shape them.

Mr. Bush had recently bumped into Erik Olsen of New Hampshire’s Kelsen Brewing Company, who told him that competing in...

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016, a federal district court in New York granted in part and denied in part Tito’s “Handmade” Vodka’s motion to dismiss several claims brought against it by a class of consumers in the case Singleton v. Fifth Generation, Inc.

Judge Brenda K. Sannes of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York issued the opinion, holding that federal approval of Tito’s labels does not provide Tito’s with a “safe harbor” from litigation, and that Tito’s use of the term “handmade” and the phrase “crafted in an old fashioned pot still” “could plausibly mislead a reasonable consumer to believe that [Tito’s] vodka is made in a hands-on, small-batch process.”

Judge Sannes’ decision to allow Singleton to move forward marks yet another instance of a federal judge finding merit in false labeling claims against Tito’s. Singleton joins Hoffman v. Fifth Generation, Inc. and Cabrera v. Fifth Generation, Inc. (both federal cases in California) as well as Pye v. Fifth Generation, Inc. (a federal case in Florida) and Terlesky v. Fifth Generation, Inc. (a federal case in Ohio), which have all survived motions by Tito’s to cut the cases short. Singleton is more akin to the two California cases, as the judges in all three refused to apply the safe harbor and held that the...

Another lawsuit. On Tuesday, a Massachusetts consumer filed suit against Guinness, alleging deceptive labeling and marketing. This is yet another in the long series of nationwide class action lawsuits stalking the alcohol beverage industry in the past 15 months, since the initial Tito’s suits. The case is O’Hara v. Diageo-Guinness, filed in federal court. Just four days earlier, a New York City man filed suit against Foster’s Beer similarly.

The Guinness complaint says the company “represents that all Extra Stout sold in the North America is brewed in Ireland at the historic St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin.”

This, however, would seem to be an extra stout assertion, because new lawyer Frank and I walked over to a beer store today. The store had Guinness in various sizes and shapes, but all of the packaging seemed to show the origin clearly. Most clearly said brewed in Ireland; some (such as above) clearly said BREWED IN CANADA. We did not see any packages that made the origin hard to divine. Things may be different up in Massachusetts but nonetheless, this would seem to drastically limit the size of any class and any damages. With all the Guinness on display at the local store, clearly showing product of Ireland, and labels like this, we don’t...

I am pleased to report that Dan Christopherson is featured in the current issue of Landslide. This is the magazine of the American Bar Association’s Intellectual Property Section. The article is entitled “Trademarks in the Golden Age of Craft Beer.” Dan is a hardcore craft beer lawyer at Lehrman Beverage Law, and he has more than eight years of highly relevant trademark experience. He wrote the article with Michael Kanach, Senior Counsel and craft beer lawyer at Gordon & Rees in San Francisco. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Even the most devout craft beer fan may not be aware of the volume of trademark disputes in craft beer today. The number of disputes is likely to increase with thousands of existing and planned breweries (not to mention other beverage producers) fighting for an increasingly small pool of quality names. While many of these “disputes” are quickly handled over a beer, opposition and cancellation proceedings and federal trademark lawsuits are becoming more common.

Below are six important lessons in branding for the craft beer industry, including the interactions between its competitors (or collaborators), the personalities of its customers, and the countless legal restrictions and requirements at the state and federal levels. Each of these elements is important to branding because...

I don’t mean to keep harping on the Tito’s Vodka cases — but there sure are a lot of them — and they are important. Because there are so many, it is not easy to keep track of how it’s going, hence this handy Scorecard. Most of the cases are slowly grinding along, with no clear winner or loser (as shown with the ⇔ symbol). At one extreme, the Aliano case went especially well for Tito (⇑). At the other extreme is the Hofmann case (⇓). In late November Judge Miller allowed Hofmann, the first-filed case, to go forward, past the defendant’s motion for summary judgment. It got even worse, five days later, when the court gave the plaintiffs permission to go into the plant and see exactly how Tito’s Vodka is made, despite the company’s strong objections.

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  We reached out to Tito and his lead lawyer to make sure we are not missing anything important, and to ask a few questions, as follows. From early on, Tito said he knew it was going to be a long haul.

How’s it going? Business has continued to be good. The lawsuits have been a distraction. But our consumer base is growing, and they have been extremely loyal. They appreciate Tito’s Handmade Vodka for...