Anheuser-Busch InBev’s plan to spread Budweiser across Europe hit a snag this week. A European Union court ruled that an European Union-wide trademark for “Bud” is not valid, supporting a challenge by a longstanding rival of Anheuser-Busch.
Before it was purchased by InBev of Belgium, St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch had been locked in a century-long trademark dispute with Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar over naming rights for “Budweiser” and variants of the name. InBev, for its part, seemed to downplay the trademark difficulties in Europe when it announced plans to buy Anheuser-Busch. This is the latest development in the (admittedly tangled) legal saga.
Bloomberg News reports:
Anheuser-Busch InBev NV’s European Union-wide trademark on ‘Bud’ isn’t valid for beer and certain other uses, an EU court ruled, backing a challenge by the brewer’s Czech competitor Budejovicky Budvar NP.
The European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg ruled that a trademark agency was wrong to issue Anheuser-Busch region- wide rights to use Bud on beer and other alcoholic beverages over the objections of Budvar. The ruling means the right to use the name “Bud” will be determined in individual countries.
The cases are part of a fight that has raged for more than a century over the name rights covering use of the Bud brand for the companies’ beer, their main product. Budvar says it owns the rights because its beer comes from Ceske Budejovice, which is called Budweis in German.
“Budweiser is a very important brand for ABI, but its real opportunity is in emerging markets,” Gerard Rijk, an analyst at ING in Amsterdam with a “buy” rating on the stock, said in an interview. “Its European potential is already very limited.”
Budvar contested three decisions by the EU’s trademark agency that gave Anheuser-Busch the region-wide rights to use Bud on beer and other alcoholic beverages. The Czech company markets its brew as Budvar in some places with the word Budweiser in smaller print and in others it sells beer as Bud, adding “original Czech” above the logo.
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Jeremiah McWilliams is a native Virginian who came to the Post-Dispatch in early 2007 to cover beer and other consumer products. He previously covered manufacturing for the Virginian-Pilot newspaper in Norfolk, Va. He is a graduate of Washington and Lee University. 
Basically what happened here is the most recent round of a longstanding battle. AB applied for a European Community Trademark. Budvar opposed their application and basically said that AB’s mark would infringe on Budvar’s registered, valid trademarks in Austria and France.
Because of the way the European Community is set up, if your registration is successfully opposed by someone holding a registration in ANY of those countries, you don’t get the community trademark registration.
AB still has an opportunity to file a trademark application in all the other EU countries individually to protect its brand. It isn’t necessarily true that there will be no AB Budweiser products in all of Europe — they just don’t get blanket protection there because they lost this battle. Likely they could get it anywhere that isn’t France of Austria. I wouldn’t be surprised if they already had trademark registrations for Budweiser in other EU communities already — the EU trademark is a means of doing things at a lesser expense (provided you don’t get opposed and fight a costly legal battle like in this situation).
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No, they can’t just call it Budweiser. That’s the whole point.
The Czech brewery has most certainly not been calling their beer Budweiser for 400 years. That’s just false. AB “had it first.” Budejovicky Budvar started marketing their beer as Budweiser after AB had already been marketing Budweiser.
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The Czech brewery is claiming (rightly — they’ve been brewing and using the name for some 400 years…) the name “Budweiser” and other variants.
It seems pretty clear to me that AB/InBev should lose this one prima facie. It’s a simple matter of “Who had it first?” for the trademark. In this case, it was the very old, very well-respected Czech brewery.
I’m pretty sure Home Depot might have similar heartburn if I opened up a big hardware store called “Home Depot”. In this case, they’re bigger, and have a big, well-paid legal staff. They’d also be correct. In the case of ABI vs. Budvar, it seems to me that Budvar is right. At least the Euro courts seem to have some sense — here, AB would probably win outright by dint of having tons of cash to wave under some corrupt judge’s nose.
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The aricle says they can’t call it “Bud”. Can they just call it what it is, “Budweiser”? Are they trying to market their product to people so stupid that 3 syllables is too difficult to use for a beer? Just call it “Budweiser” and be done with it. There, I just saved your cheapo company millions of dollars in lawyer fees and court costs. All I want is a 1% commission in dollars saves.
It’s difficult enough for bartenders around here as it is. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a bar and ordered a “Bud” and got a Bud Light. Gross.
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if it wasn’t so disgustingly sickening, this would almost be funny! they pay 52b for a brand name to take global and they can’t even use the name in parts of the world!
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