E-Malt.com News article: New Zealand: DB Breweries ready to fight for the beer term ‘radler’ it has trade-marked in 2003

DB Breweries, which is now wholly owned by Singapore-based Asia Pacific Breweries, last week signalled its intention to fight a legal application filed in May by the Society of Beer Advocates (Soba) to invalidate its trade-marking of radler, Stuff.co.nz posted on July, 21.

Earlier this year DB Breweries forced the tiny Green Man Brewery to stop using the generic term radler and re-label its bottles, because it had trade-marked that name in New Zealand in 2003.

But with the assistance of New Zealand's leading intellectual property litigation law firm, James & Wells Intellectual Property, Soba challenged the trade mark registration approval by the Intellectual Property Office of New Zealand.

DB waited until the last possible day to respond, filing a counter-statement rejecting the argument its trademark was a generic term, and reasserting its right to retain radler as its intellectual property.

Hamilton-based Soba secretary Greig McGill said while this was expected, private ownership of beer style names was totally unacceptable.

Mr McGill said Soba wanted to strike a blow for anyone to have the freedom to brew and correctly name a generic style of beer.

Soba's strategy would be to establish that New Zealanders, particularly brewers, were aware of the generic nature of the term before that date.

"We may soon require the assistance of all brewers in New Zealand in our quest to show that DB are either malicious in registering a trademark they knew was a generic brewing term, or incompetent in not knowing it was, when every other brewer worth their salt did," Mr McGill said.

"One outcome means they lose the trademark, the other means they lose huge amounts of credibility by being a brewer without a clue about beer."

Mr McGill said DB's tactic in waiting until the very last day before responding to its legal application was "a cynical, but widely predicted move designed to maximise the distance from May's negative publicity".

But a formal hearing is likely months away with lawyers for both sides yet to file evidence and their responses.

Soba will argue that radler, like pilsener, porter, brown ale or bock, is a generic name for a recognised style of beer and should therefore not be a term owned by one brewery.

But DB said its original trademark application reflected the significant investment the company had made in its Monteith's Radler brew, which has been on the market for eight years.

DB communications manager Jo Jalfon was confident the radler trademark registration would be upheld.

DB's trademarking action has forced Green Man Brewery to relabel its beer under the name "cyclist" the translation of the German word radler.


22 July, 2009