OHIM approves AB InBev Bud trademark
The Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) has granted beer-manufacturer AB InBev a Community trademark (CTM) for the controversial term ‘Bud’.
In January the General Court of the EU backed AB InBev to register Bud as a CTM, in one of many rulings in a long-running dispute with Czech rival Budějovický Budvar.
“While we have national rights for Bud and Budweiser in many EU member states, it [the CTM] fills in the remaining gaps that we had,” said Frank Hellwig, global legal director at AB InBev.
“We now have more countries covered by Bud or Budweiser trademark registrations than we have had at any point in time in the 137-year history of the brand, giving us virtually worldwide protection for the Bud or Budweiser brands,” he added.
AB InBev and Budějovický Budvar have been locked in trademark disputes for more than 100 years. AB Inbev first applied for the Bud CTM in 1996 and, at the General Court earlier this year, Budvar’s appeals against the application were dismissed because the company failed to “significantly” show that it used Bud as an appellation of origin – a sign specifying a product’s geographical origin – in France and Austria.
