A watershed battle is looming between DB Breweries and a brewers' advocate group which is taking DB to task for the first time over trademarking generic beer styles.
In May, the Society of Beer Advocates (Soba) legally challenged DB over the trademarking of "radler" - a name Soba says has been recognised as a beer style for centuries - after DB forced Dunedin's Green Man brewery to stop using the name in relation to its radler-style beer.
In its response to the society's declaration of invalidity with regard to the trademark, DB said the radler trademark had been used by it or a related company in connection with beer since 2001.
Soba president Geoff Griggs, of Blenheim, said radler was a style of beer common in Germany and produced by two breweries in New Zealand: DB and Green Man Brewery.
DB took action against Green Man late last year, saying its use of the name radler was a trademark breach.
This forced the brewery to relabel its beer "cyclist", which is the translation of the German word radler.
Mr Griggs said while the trademark had been held by DB for several years, it was not until Green Man produced a radler-style beer that the trademark became widely known.
He said private "ownership" of beer style names was totally unacceptable.
Soba's lawyer Ceri Wells, a Hamilton-based intellectual property lawyer who has taken on the case pro-bono, said it was now up to DB to prove it had not acted in bad faith and did not know in 2003, when it applied to register the trademark, that radler was a generic term for a recognised beer style.
It would be interesting to see what argument DB came up with, when its own Monteiths website (Monteiths produced DB's radler beer) said the beer is "a refreshing fruity lager, based on the style brewed in Bavaria in the 1920s".
It would be difficult to believe a European-owned brewer such as DB would not be aware of such a popular beer style as radler.
The case would be a watershed one as it was the first time anyone had brought bad faith proceedings in relation to intellectual property against a large brewer in New Zealand, Mr Wells said.
