Help West Sixth Brewing against lawsuit

The designs are remarkably similar. I know, I know... you have to turn the can upside down. To me it looks like that's exactly what the marketing company did that they hired to design their labels i.e. somebody got lazy.

I'm pretty sure the point that is trying to be made here is that people are confused by the similarities of the two logos. In my opinion, if you are confused by these two logos, you shouldn't be drinking beer.

I'm pretty sure the point that is trying to be made here is that people are confused by the similarities of the two logos. In my opinion, if you are confused by these two logos, you shouldn't be drinking beer.

I disagree. Labeling is extremely important to differentiate beers and wines. Just look at "jumping kangaroo" or "footprint in the sand" wine labels. I don't know which wineries those are, but at least the designer has created a label which, for me, is highly recallable in a virtual sea of similar products. What if a new competitor just used the left foot instead of the right? Or a jumping wallaby instead of a kangaroo? Magic Hat, regardless of their size, has spent good money on a design/marketing budget to achieve such differentiation. They have the right to protect what they've paid good money for and competitors shouldn't be able to simply give their design a slight tweak and then call it their own, I don't care how "small" the competitor is.

Obviously the courts are the place to decide if this is, indeed, just a slight tweak&copy or a completely innocent coincidence. West 6th, IMO, comes off as whiny and a dirty player. If Magic Hat's press release is to be taken at face value, West 6th first negotiated a modification to their labeling, but then reneged and launched a social network assault on their competitor, knowing full well they could rely on a superficial public buying into the tried and true craft vs corporate, David vs Goliath routine.

To me the labels are similar enough to be confusing. I can imagine standing in front of that "wall of craft beer" at Whole foods and thinking hey, that looks like something I seem to remember having had before and having enjoyed. The courts will decide if lots of people would be similarly confused, or if DanB is simply dumb.

http://www.heraldonline.com/2013/05/22/ ... ds-to.html

On a side note it's interesting to see that the new Goliath is not BudMillerCoorsInBev, but successful craft beer outfits which have been consolidated.

This is what W 6th posted yesterday (emphasis mine):

Dear Cerveceria Costa Rica (owners of the Magic Hat Brand),

We saw that you finally decided to hire a PR person to reply to our petition from yesterday. I suppose after more than 10,000 people signed it, you couldn’t ignore it any more.

Since you decided to publish our letters (which I hope everyone takes the time to read, they’re hilarious), we also want to make sure everyone can see the full text of the bogus lawsuit. As you can see there are some crazy claims in it, and some that even look like it might have been copied and pasted from other lawsuits – what’s that craziness about us moving into South Carolina?

We thought that since you won’t return any of our personal phone calls or emails, the best way to communicate with you must be over Facebook. So, here goes:

——

To address your points directly:

You claim that you worked for months in good faith to negotiate with us. Actually, in our letters, which you’ve published, anyone can see that we’ve waited on a reply from you from our last letter for nearly 3 months. In that letter, we made several concessions in the last offer, including to keep the words “West Sixth Brewing” near our logo in any further designs. But instead of responding with a call, or a letter, you responded with a lawsuit. That’s not negotiating, that’s bullying.

You said that “talks between the two breweries started in September of 2012 after marketplace concerns surfaced by a Kentucky wholesaler who refused to carry West Sixth Brewing because he felt it too closely resembled Magic Hat.” Unfortunately, that isn’t true at all. We have two distributors who distribute both us and Magic Hat without any sort of confusion. We’re sorry that this is what you were told. What actually happened between us and your distributor is this: After we had advanced negotiations to sign with your distributor they were told by another brand they carry that they should not distribute our beer.

All that said, as we indicated in previous notes, we’d rather solve this problem than keep it going — after all we’ve got good beer to make. So, here’s what we propose: In your public response, you indicated you would be happy with a settlement that includes the 4 clauses you outlined. We pretty much agreed in our last letter to do items 2-4, which were:

2) Including our name around our logo in future items
3) Phasing out any merchandise that doesn’t include the words “West Sixth Brewing” in close proximity to our logo
4) Amend our current federal trademark to include something different from the compass

What we had a concern with was number 1, replacing our compass with a different symbol in exchange for agreeing that we would never use the numeral “6”. We just don’t think your trademark rights in the numeral “9” allow you to keep out any competitor who uses the numeral “6”. Our address is 501 West Sixth Street – hence our name. We’re not trying to use any of your designs. Heck, we already distribute a lot more beer than you do in Kentucky.

So, let us get this straight. When you say you’re presenting “the truth”, the “truth” is that you are suing us in federal court because of the compass in our logo?

If that’s what it takes to resolve this, why didn’t you say that in response to our last letter, rather than waiting 3 months and then filing a lawsuit?

While we have the law on our side, we’re reasonable people, and we don’t want to spend all our money on court – we’re brewers not fighters.

We’re willing to phase out the current design of our compass and replace it with something that is more clearly a compass and not a star. Here are a couple quick options our designed worked up for you to choose from.

Will you publically agree to drop the lawsuit and trademark protest if we select one of these as our new trademark? We’ll let you pick the one you like best. You can email us directly here, or you can just post another update to your Facebook page, either one works.

So, what do you say, let’s bury the hatchet and down a beer together?

We’d greatly appreciate a response as quick as yesterday’s this time – no 3 month wait this time, please.

Sorry, but the logos are similar. I know you can take the time to point out the differences, but I have seen people order magic hat in bars when it was the new West Six. There are too many micro brews in America and this was bound to happen. West Six should just change the logo. It's not worth it. It doesn't matter who owns Magic Hat or Goose Island or whatever beer you drink. A good beer is a good beer period.

Sorry, but the logos are similar. I know you can take the time to point out the differences, but I have seen people order magic hat in bars when it was the new West Six. There are too many micro brews in America and this was bound to happen. West Six should just change the logo. It's not worth it. It doesn't matter who owns Magic Hat or Goose Island or whatever beer you drink. A good beer is a good beer period.

Well if you have seen it, then it must be the calamity that Magic Hat claims! People will now be ordering Magic Hat by mistake thinking it's actually West Sixth. That would be regrettable.

Obviously the courts are the place to decide....

West 6th, IMO, comes off as whiny and a dirty player. If Magic Hat's press release is to be taken at face value....

...knowing full well they could rely on a superficial public buying into the tried and true craft vs corporate, David vs Goliath routine....

To me the labels are similar enough to be confusing.....

I can imagine standing in front of that "wall of craft beer" at Whole foods and thinking hey, that looks like something I seem to remember having had before and having enjoyed...

The courts will decide if lots of people would be similarly confused, or if DanB is simply dumb.

Don't need courts for that last one Dan. I don't suggest you allow people who rely on you in any meaningful way to know that you have trouble differentiating these two logos. They might conclude that you are operating with diminished capacity!

You know, like the rest of the superficial public. Cheers!

Sorry, but the logos are similar. I know you can take the time to point out the differences, but I have seen people order magic hat in bars when it was the new West Six. There are too many micro brews in America and this was bound to happen. West Six should just change the logo. It's not worth it. It doesn't matter who owns Magic Hat or Goose Island or whatever beer you drink. A good beer is a good beer period.

6's and 9's are similar, as are M's and W's depending on the font type. If you can't be bothered to pay attention to what you're doing you don't deserve to get what you were looking for in the first place. Both designs are unique enough that the fact that they both contain a number that is the opposite upside down as well as a starburst of some form should not matter. The West Sixth Design clearly spells out the brewery name in large letters with their logo surrounded by hops. Are their other brands that use hops on their cans? Surely, maybe they should remove those as well...

an earlier dick move by magic hat (emphasis mine):

To summarize, Magic Hat’s flagship beer is called #9. Alan Newman, founder of Magic Hat, contacted us one year ago and told us that our use of the name 9LB Porter was trademark infringement and that we should not have been issued a federal trademark in the first place. His goal in contacting us was to reach some compromise and avoid litigation on both ends.

After much discussion, Alan agreed that we could keep the name but we would have to change the label and use the spelled out word “NINE” in place of the numeric “9″ so that there would be less confusion with the brands. We were ok with this and had even come up with a number of different label designs. Where we disagreed, however, is that Alan wants to own the brand name 9LB Porter and then license it back to us for no fee. He argued that this was the only way he could protect his trade name against any future trademark infringement

full story: http://seattlebeernews.com/2010/06/trad ... wn-porter/

Maybe magic hat should have chosen a beer name that didn't have a common numeral in it, then they wouldn't have to be harassing people like this.

I don't suggest you allow people who rely on you in any meaningful way to know that you have trouble differentiating these two logos. They might conclude that you are operating with diminished capacity!

You know, like the rest of the superficial public. Cheers!

If you seee the beer mats and tap handles which only have the circled 6 logo without the other stuff they look virtually indistinguishable from the competitor's. I'm pretty sure most bartenders don't neatly arrange beer mats so that the proper side is facing the customer so a six becomes a nine pretty quick. I may be dumb, but I'm not so dumb as to hire a logo designer whose "proprietary" design is so close to a direct competitors that a lawsuit is all but guaranteed. That was really, really stupid.

FWIW these Lexington guys agreed in principle to a concession, and then reneged on that concession because they hadn't done their financial homework beforehand. They are also bleatiing to the facebook world that "those meanie weanies won't return our phone calls" when in fact their own lawyer requested that all communications must go through her. That alone makes these guys unserious douchebags. Anyway, dollars to donuts they lose and/or go under.

Again, just to emphasize, I just re-read the original post with it's link to West 6th St's online statement. They were telling bald faced lies from the very get-go in an attempt to influence public opinion. Not that I've evver had one of their beers, but if I were a local consumer I might just object to being jerked around that way. Just sayin'.

this just posted by West Sixth:

On Tuesday night, Cerveceria Costa Rica (owners of Magic Hat IP) posted 4 conditions to outline a way to settle our differences. On Wednesday morning, we accepted all 4 conditions and showed them 4 different new options for our logo. All they had to do was select one of them.

But it’s been more than 24 hours, and we still haven’t had a response to our offer.

In that time, Magic Hat has accused us of lying, damaging their brand, and then asked us to stop talking publically about the dispute. Of course, that last part is the one that really matters to them.

Our campaign is winning. We’ve got their attention. Nearly 15,000 people have joined our campaign to tell Magic Hat “No More”. If you haven’t yet signed it, please go here and do it right now.

We have to keep the pressure on. Can you help by doing these 4 things today?

1) Share a link to http://www.nomoremagichat.com/ on your Facebook page and Twitter feed. This is critical to our success. Even if you’ve done it before.
2) Send a quick email to 3 of your friends asking them to sign the petition. The email can be really simple – just say: This is an important issue to me and I’d really appreciate your support.
3) Post something to the Magic Hat Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/magichatbrewing letting them know what you think about their corporate bullying.
4) If you know any friends who are reporters, can you send them a quick note suggesting that they might like to write about this frivolous lawsuit?

If you can help us by doing those 4 things today, I know we’ll be successful.

Thank you again for joining us in telling Magic Hat “No More”!

More info at: http://www.westsixth.com/still-waiting-for-a-response/

Yes but they are lying. They're just doing a better job of manipulating a superficial facebook crowd.

On edit: what really annoys me here is that my facebook feed is increasingly getting bombed with things just like this one. Sign the petition! Donate now! Take sides in a dispute without knowing any particulars and only getting one slanted and/or dishonest depiction of events! Do it now! Donate now! Click the Like button now! Who cares if we're liars?

Yes but they are lying. They're just doing a better job of manipulating a superficial facebook crowd.

On edit: what really annoys me here is that my facebook feed is increasingly getting bombed with things just like this one. Sign the petition! Donate now! Take sides in a dispute without knowing any particulars and only getting one slanted and/or dishonest depiction of events! Do it now! Donate now! Click the Like button now! Who cares if we're liars?

Yes Dan, everyone is superficial but you. It must be a lonely world you live in. Having the ability to tell who is lying and who is not but not getting everyone else to accept your word for it. How frustrating it must be!

I believe you mentioned that you hadn't even had West Sixth's IPA. But you don't need to do you? You've got this all figured out. You would have us believe that the millions of superficial consumers will order the wrong beer because of this logo causing damage to Magic Hat.

I've had Magic Hat's #9 and I've had West Sixth's IPA. If I accidentally got the wrong beer, I don't think it would have a significant deleterious effect on me, Magic Hat, or West Sixth.

These beers are not similar in taste however and I would know that I had the wrong beer upon tasting it. Are you seriously suggesting that I (or you) would make this mistake over and over again?

I've spent considerable time in bars that had them both on tap and I've never been confused. Someone said he witnessed someone who made such a mistake. I will stipulate that people get confused and it is possible that someone would confuse the two. They might also accidentally order 60 Min IPA or 90 Min IPA. Perhaps Dogfish Head should be worried next?

I think West Sixth's logo is very memorable, effective in invoking their identity, and provides immediate brand association.

I think Magic Hat's logo is dull, forgettable, and does not provide good brand association. This is just my opinion.

I think Magic Hat's real beef should be with whoever designed and approved their logo. I think they are jealous because it was done better by someone else and they are trying to cash in.

Perhaps you should try a West Sixth IPA the next time you have the chance. Then you might gain some perspective that would be useful in this argument. No one will confuse these two beers upon tasting them. Not even you.

I would greatly enjoy seeing this settled in a duel. Might I suggest Thunderdome rules?

"Two men enter, one man leaves!"