Thirty-three years of distribution could not save BeerMart after employees concealed the age of fifty-one cases of Schlitz. This Throwback Friday examines the Seventh Circuit decision, contrasting freshness disputes, and contract terms that help brewers and distributors keep stale beer from becoming a termination fight.
An inoperative pizza oven triggered a ten-day license suspension for Bogle. The court’s rejection of California’s theory offers suppliers and distributors practical lessons in documenting retail promotions and challenging unsupported trade-practice charges.
Grapes get a vintage. Apples get a labeling restriction. Garden Path’s challenge to TTB’s cider rules ended over administrative exhaustion, leaving the First Amendment question unanswered. The filings offer lessons for producers seeking to put truthful harvest-year information on their labels.
Judge Sunshine Sykes takes on the Fifth Circuit’s approach to cannabis advertising and the First Amendment. Her thoughtful preliminary injunction opinion examines the same-sovereign theory, consumers’ rights to commercial information, and why federal cannabis prohibition should not automatically end the constitutional inquiry. Read the opinion, appellate briefs, and access the Ninth Circuit oral argument.
Sutter Home won twice in its effort to block El Bandido Yankee’s trademarks. Then the Ninth Circuit reversed, explaining why the whole mark matters and why evidence of marketplace coexistence deserved consideration. The decision offers beverage brands practical lessons about resisting expansive trademark claims and building the evidence needed to defend a name.
A valuable incentive. More sales. Fewer purchases from a competitor. Those facts alone don’t establish unlawful exclusion. This Throwback Friday, we revisit Fedway and explain how suppliers and distributors can challenge unsupported trade practice claims by demanding evidence of a potential threat to retailer independence.
A termination notice does not finish the handoff. The KRIS–Winebow dispute highlights the contract terms brands and wholesalers need for continued sales, compensation, trademark use, and control of websites and social accounts. Includes sample language addressing performance during the transition and the transfer of digital brand assets.
How far can Congress go to collect the whiskey tax? The Supreme Court’s home distilling case brings together nineteenth-century moonshining, modern tax rates, and the limits of federal power.
A “100% agave” label makes a claim about what went into the bottle. Costco’s tequila dismissal raises a harder question: how much weight should Mexican certification carry when consumers challenge that composition with testing? We examine the ruling and the records beverage businesses should retain.
BuzzBallz acquired Big Sipz’s domains, redirected them to its own site, and later defeated the brand owner’s remaining counterclaims. The ruling explains why trademark timing, evidence of competitive harm, and proof supporting litigation claims matter to beverage manufacturers and wholesalers.
Beer Wolf’s comeback came with a federal lawsuit. The dispute offers practical lessons about defining licensed property, controlling trademark registrations, approving merchandise, and spelling out sell-off rights when a licensing relationship ends.
A 30-day termination clause does not settle what Florida’s beer franchise statute requires. Titan’s Medalla Light dispute shows why brewers and wholesalers should align notices, cure periods, performance evidence, and contract language before attempting an exit.
