EP-196 Brendan Palfreyman of Trademark Your Beer

This week’s guest comes at the beer world through a unique angle—the legal
lens. He’s a lawyer based in New York State whose firm works with small
brewers on a variety of business issues, but his personal focus at the firm
is in trademark and IP.

You’ve probably come across his thoughts on Twitter, where he shares
updates on major trademark disputes like the Lagunitas and Sierra Nevada
battle over the term IPA and Stone’s fight with MillerCoors over the
Keystone brand. Brendan’s commentary—which is shared on his blog, but
mostly on Twitter—has become something of a 101 guide for brewers and beer
fans on how to talk about these things.

If you’ve seen these debates, you know the beer world could really use a
primer.

While it’s true that most beer fans don’t like to see lawsuits between
brands they’re fans of, the business reality is that, sometimes, these
things need to be handled by professionals. And that often serves to
highlight how delicate some of the bonds can be among breweries who
otherwise subscribe to a cooperative ideal. The reality is that there are
7,000 breweries out there, and you owe it to your employees and
shareholders to protect what’s their’s, regardless of the optics.

On today’s episode, we dig into Brendan’s career and his perspective on the
state of craft brewing from a legal perspective. After that, he elaborates
on some of the cases that have made him Twitter famous.