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7 June 2017Trademarks

Diageo clashes with spirits company over whiskey bottle design

Drinks maker Diageo has sued US-based Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits over its Redemption brand of whiskey, which it claimed was “revised to closely mimic” the appearance of Diageo’s Bulleit brand.

The complaint was filed at the US District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, June 6.

It claimed Deutsch Family “redesigned the bottle and label for a line of its whiskey beverage products in order to knock off the appearance and unfairly trade on the reputation of Diageo’s extremely popular Bulleit brand”.

The claim added that the overall appearance of Deutsch Family’s revised product packaging is “strikingly similar to that of Diageo’s Bulleit whiskey and copies the same vintage style and appearance”.

According to the suit, Redemption was redesigned from a long narrow cylinder-shaped bottle to a shorter, wider version with curved edges and the brand name above the label.

Diageo claimed this change infringed its trademark and trade dress rights and was similar to the Bulleit brand.

“Defendants engaged in the foregoing conduct in bad faith, with full knowledge of Diageo’s superior rights, and in a deliberate and wilful attempt to infringe Diageo’s rights and to trade on Diageo’s vast goodwill,” said the suit.

The trademark in question is US registration number 3,075,812, relating to alcoholic beverages, namely, distilled spirits.

Diageo claimed it had tried to get “defendants to voluntarily cease their infringing activity”  but that Deutsch Family “refused to alter the packaging for the accused products”.

Diageo is seeking injunctive relief, destruction of infringing products, profits, damages and attorneys’ fees.

In April of this year, Diageo and rival Sazerac reached an out of court settlement after Diageo claimed that Sazerac had committed trademark infringement, unfair competition, trade dress infringement and dilution of its Bulleit brand.

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