Breweries have used many vehicles to handle trademark disputes including various types of agreements, social media campaigns, inter partes trademark proceedings, and litigation. Within the past few years, craft brewers and intellectual property lawyers alike have noticed greater tension over trademark use in the craft beer industry causing more disputes to bypass efforts to reach an amicable agreement and head straight to the courtroom. Reasons for this trend towards litigation …show more content…
Therefore, structuring the organization in a way that will promote participation may be crucial to its success. One such structure may be to pair up with a currently existing, well-respected trade group, such as the Brewer’s Association, that is already dedicated to unifying craft brewers. If high membership from the industry can be achieved, then the costs of trademark right enforcement can be reduced through implementation of both preventative mechanisms, such as search tools and monitoring features, and cost and time effective enforcement mechanisms, such as mandatory