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Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Tree Hop Head vs. Green Flash Hop Head Red

Rick Green runs the BC Beer Blog out on the west coast and the other day he posted an excellent read on a dispute between Kelowna's Tree Brewery and California's Green Flash Brewery over the name Hop Head.

Turns out that Green Flash has a beer by the name of Hop Head Red Ale that was being imported into BC (since Aug. 08). Tree Brewing, who produces a delicious IPA named Hop Head IPA, had their lawyers contact Green Flash insisting that they cease using the name Hop Head in BC, a move Tree feels was necessary to protect their trademark.

Based on the blog entry, it seems that Green Flash has decided to stop importing that brand for the time being, rather than get into a pissing match in court.

Read Green's post here, where he dissects some other cases involving ligation between breweries over naming rights.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know about the Kelowna product, but the Green Flash Hop Head Red is a delicious beer. But sorry Troy...I just checked the "cellar" and it's already all gone...

BC's loss, but it's true that those names would be confusing.

Anonymous said...

Oops, just read more closely and realized that one is called just "Hop Head" and the other "Hop Head Red". That's less confusing.

I'm sure there are a myriad of beers called "Hop Head" out there. RateBeer says there are about 20 - including the delicious one in Ontario, of course.

Troy Burtch said...

hey shawn,

the song "why can't we be friends" springs to mind when I hear news like this.

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