It took roughly four years years for a verdict to be rendered in favor of Stone Brewing in its high-profile trademark-infringement lawsuit against Molson Coors, but it only took eight weeks for a case against the North County-based beermaker to end in a dismissal.
On April 7, Charlotte-based Sycamore Brewing filed a summons with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina claiming Stone had unlawfully used the trademarked phrase “Keep It Juicy” in marketing and packaging graphics for Stone Hazy IPA. Sycamore obtained a registration for the mark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in May of 2020, just four days before the market debut of Stone Hazy IPA. In light of this, the court ordered a preliminary injunction on April 21 ordering Stone to cease use of the tagline moving forward and cover the phrase on remaining packages of Stone Hazy IPA.
In mid-May, Stone filed a countersuit against Sycamore in which it claimed the company failed to disclose the fact that, not only is “juicy” a widely used industry term, but the phrase “Keep It Juicy” has been in use by Two Roads Brewing on can of its Two Juicy double IPA since 2017. That Connecticut-based operation’s products are distributed in 14 U.S. states. On top of that, the phrase has also been used by Delaware’s Blue Earl Brewing and Woodland, California’s Blue Note Brewing, though Sycamore has not pursued legal action against either entity.
This revelation means neither Sycamore nor Stone own exclusive rights or can claim first-business-use precedent where the mark is concerned in spite of the former’s USPTO registration. Rather than defend itself in court, Sycamore elected to drop its lawsuit, which was dismissed without prejudice. Either side may bring similar litigation on the matter in the future and both parties must pay their own legal fees.
“While we are relieved this case is over, we feel it’s necessary to set the record straight. Sycamore forced Stone to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal expense to defend ourselves and sent our team scrambling to sticker 21,000 boxes of beer in warehouses across the country, taking more than 600 hours of valuable time,” says Stone CEO Maria Stipp. “We also had to engage the resources of our distributor partners, to whom we are immensely grateful. We complied earnestly with the court orders out of respect for the trademark protections and the court system. As we now know, all of this was because of Sycamore’s baseless trademark claims and opportunism.”
When news of the lawsuit first broke, Stone General Counsel Josh Weiss stated it was the first time the company had heard of the issue. While it is commonplace for representatives of a company that believe their trademark has been infringed upon to contact the potential offender, either or personally or via a formal cease-and-desist communique, Weiss and Stipp contest that Sycamore never reached out to notify them about its mark or to request that Stone stop using the phrase “Keep It Juicy”.
Other than their case against MillerCoors over the conglomerate’s rebrand of its Keystone Light product line, which resulted in a $56 million jury award in March, Stone’s countersuit against Sycamore is the only time the company has sued another business over a trademark dispute.
“At the end of the day, the truth came out. We can only hope this helps prevent similar situations from happening to any other brewer,” says Stipp. “We are thrilled that Stone—and Sycamore, for that matter—can now turn its attention back to making great beer.”