Small US based brewery ‘Mooselick Brewery’ which opened in 2015 was recently forced to change its name to ‘Granite Roots Brewing’ after being accused of trade mark infringement by the much larger Canadian Brewery ‘Moosehead Brewing’ founded in 1867 over the ‘Moose’ name.
Moosehead Brewing sent Mooselick Brewery a cease and desist letter in 2016. The Canadian brewery objected to the name moose in their brand name as well as in a number of their beer names and the use of a moose image on their label and logo. As Moosehead Brewing (Canada’s oldest independent brewery) had a history of filing similar trade mark litigation lawsuits to other breweries, Mooselick Brewery decided to rebrand instead of trying to fight the trade mark action. Although the rebranding was quite costly and involved production of new logos, labels and promotional material it was still cheaper and quicker than waiting to fight the trade mark infringement claim.
Source: http://buff.ly/2pqZvUA
