"The Cat" & "Wild Cat" Malt Liquors

Cat" version say that it's brewed in Utica, NY (I

and Pittsburgh Brewing in Pitsburgh, PA)?

Sounds like two different beers. You can't trademark the word 'cat.'

Phil

====visit the New York City Homebrewers Guild website:

Cat" version say that it's brewed in Utica, NY (I

and Pittsburgh Brewing in Pitsburgh, PA)?

It's not unusual in brewing for the owner of a beer brand to have another brewery simulantaneously brew the same brand for a different region of the country (assuming that Pittsburgh is the originator of the label) OR to have said contract brewer change from one brewery to another. Many years ago, Ballantine in Newark brewed Meisterbrau's Lite, several brewers brewed and sold Black Horse Ale (Koch, Champale, one in Mass.), 3 or 4 brewed Billy Beer for different regions, the interesting Swiss "near beer" Birell was always switching brewers for the domestic product, etc. In more recent times, Coors had West End (Matts) make Blue Moon brands for the East Coast and the breweries that made Sam Adams and Pete's used to bounce around a lot, too.

Yes you can. It all depends on context. If I built a car and named it "cat," I could indeed trademark it. If I started selling animals, I couldn't trademark the name "cat" for my particular brand of felines.

-Steve

How do so many breweries use the word 'dog?' Are you saying that no brewery has trademarked this word?

Phil ====visit the New York City Homebrewers Guild website:

does "The Cat" version say that it's brewed in Utica, NY (I

Wisconsin and Pittsburgh Brewing in Pitsburgh, PA)?

you also have to understand the trademark thing.... pick up a few items and see which actually have the little trademark sign on them. It costs a considerable amount of money to make something a registered trademark. A musician I know said that to trademark their band's name would have cost around a million dollars!!!!! That is to make a certain word unusable by anyother individual or entity for any other purpose except in conjunction with the trademark owner. Thus no one could call anything else besides their product a cat if the term was trademarked.....i.e. Coke, Pepsi, Brunswick etc.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I was led to believe......

Phil wrote: >

Uh, not to get too involved in the confusing legal world of trademarks, copyrights, patents, etc., take a look at these two labels- does anyone think these two variations of a brand name DON'T belong to the same company?

I don't know of any breweries known simply as "Dog." I know of Hair of the Dog, Dogfish Head, etc. They in all likelihood have trademarked the full name.

-Steve

Yes, more or less true, but you left out one distinction. There's a big difference between a registered trademark (which gets the little R-ball symbol) and a plain old trademark. I can claim a trademark without registering it or even filing it in most states. Granted, that makes it much more difficult to defend should there be someone else who comes along later and claims the same mark, but simple trademarks (with the TM symbol) are much more wide-open (and cheap) compared to registered marks.

And there are exceptions, even with registered marks, regarding the idea that "no one" can use it. For example, 7-Eleven is a registered mark, but there are stores in Indianapolis named that that have no affiliation with the national convenience store chain, because those stores existed before the convenience stores and had a mark within Indiana. Duplicate marks can also be allowed when there's no chance of the two products being confused with each other. Witness how there's a car named Jaguar and Apple's latest operating system was known as Jaguar. Or even how there's Apple Computer and Apple Corps records; no confusion between the two (although now that Apple's in the music business, that has prompted Apple Corps to reopen litigation).

-Steve

Which brings us back to my question... why is one of the varisnts brewed in Utica now> Did Melanie Brewing close and production get shifted to Matt Brewing?

Melanie is just a "DBA" name of City Brewery, which seems to still be open.

As to why the brand is now also brewed at Matts and if it's still brewed by City as well is a question the owner (Pittsburgh Brewing? or maybe just a marketing company) or City are probably not going to bother to release. Contracts change all the time for various reasons.

They sure do make a lot of malt liquors and high alcohol beers, tho', don't they?

Hmmm...LaCrosse Wisconsin, eh? Are they some sort of reborn Heilemans?

Best regards, Bill

Yeah, and they used to make my fave American Standard beer "BURGER"...

(From

)

Burger, Burger Light and Hudy Delight in cans are produced under contract by City Brewing Co. in LaCrosse, Wis.

But I don't see it on their present list, although they seem to have a new beer called "City Pale Ale" that appeared slightly after Burger disappeared... hmmm.

Sort of...

Yeah, but Burger was an old Hudepohl label, owned by Snider, right? Most breweries don't advertise the contract brews they make or make them part of their website. Note that they have a separate page for contract brewers- Mid-West Beverage Packers, but don't mention any brands.

Kinda doubt it. More likely that one of their standard lagers- City, Kul or LaCrosse- is pretty close to(if not the same as) the Burger that was coming out of there.

It's not the trademark registration that's expensive (check sites like

you can do it for under $1,000), it's defending it to make that registration worthwhile that racks up the bucks.

-- Lew Bryson

Author of "New York Breweries" and "Pennsylvania Breweries," 2nd ed., both available at The Hotmail address on this post is for newsgroups only: I don't check it, or respond to it. Spam away.

I don't have the time or will to research it right now, but there is a difference between a simple trademark (TM) and a registered trademark (R). Yes, you have to register both of them, to confuse the issue, and a simple TM registration is a pretty straightforward affair (and more of the costs are likely to be tied up in the search for possible infringements than the actual registration). But legally they are different things, and the standards are different.

I could be erroneous in my recollection that registered marks (meaning the (R) type) are more expensive, but the barrier for getting one is definitely higher. Too bad I'm not in touch anymore with my former colleague the intellectual property attorney. He explained the difference to me in about

30 seconds in a way that made perfect sense. Since it's not information I've needed to use, I haven't retained it, apparently.

-Steve