What a bunch of corporate bully boys! Shocking behaviour.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-23697138
Looks like we'll have to buy some beer and continue to avoid the dodgy caffeine drinks.
Great quotes from the 8 man brewery "we're not planning to move into Formula One or send a man skydiving from space very soon"
Sounds to me that Red Bull have been very generous in providing a small start up company with some free advertising 😉
On a related note, how do Red Bull have so much money? They do a ridiculous amount of stuff (F1 and various other motorsport teams, they own a load of football teams, Flugtag, Rampage, cliff diving, taking people into space etc) Is it simply just profit from the drink?
Good question. It tastes terrible so seems unlikely.
They make an awful lot of profit on those cans and then spend most of that on the brand.
A letter from Hansjorg Jeserznik, Red Bull's brand enforcement manager, said the brewery's mark was "highly similar" to Red Bull's earlier trademark of RED and its application covered goods in the same marketplace in which it was competing.
How the hell can you trademark a colour? Such as Red or indeed Orange?
Celeste I can understand, but not a common colour like red. The lunatics taken over the asylum?
Makes you wonder why they don't go after Vodafone who use "Red" a lot in their branding. Maybe they need to start picking on someone their own size!
Red Bull is events / sports company that also produce a drink, not the otehr way round
On a related note, how do Red Bull have so much money? They do a ridiculous amount of stuff (F1 and various other motorsport teams, they own a load of football teams, Flugtag, Rampage, cliff diving, taking people into space etc) Is it simply just profit from the drink?
You know when you see the documentary about the man going into space on the TV. The TV channel pays them for that.
You know when 7 million people or whatever watch the man jumping from space on their website, that's 7 million people watching 30 minutes of advertising. Goodness knows how much that would cost to buy in any other form.
Their stated aim is that the media & brand activities should aim to make a profit. Apparently they don't get there yet, but they aren't purely paying for them out of drink profits, their media arm makes quite a lot of money (they sell things like playback rights on the videos, images etc.), albeit not as much as it spends.
It's there own fault for using those knock-off helmet stickers as the bottle labels
So I guess Red Stripe will be be looking to pursue Red Bull for the same thing then?
Its a bit poor, Red Bull will most likely lose as well.
Over zealous brand protection department trying to justify their salaries.
On the plus side free publicity for the brewery
Unfortunately a lot of small companies back down from this sort of thing, can't afford to risk losing.
I wonder if owners of the assorted Red Well Inns and public housed could combine to make a counter claim against Red Bull. They obviously pre-date said rocket fuel and have a greater claim to the trade name. That's before we get to the potential confusion with the various Black Bulls. Never mind the Red Bulls which there seem to be a few of.
Red Bull would lose the case - if it went to court. It is only vaguely similar - me thinks someone is doing some viral marketing ....
there was talk recently about a possible deal between Leeds United and Red Bull. Having seen what RB have done with Austria Salzburg and the baseball team now known as New York Red Bulls, that idea was extremely unpopular in Leeds.
Turned out to be a non-story - so far anyway
Why don't they go at the companies that do actually effect their sales??
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etc etc!!!
Ahh but their coverage of the WC DH at the weekend was excellent so I'm happy to sacrifice a small brewery for the sake of getting decent telly...
Isn't redbull itself a rip off of an original Thai made energy drink?
No, more inspired, one of the founders of RedBull (Chaleo Yoovidhya) created the original - Krating Daeng
This place is up the road from me http://www.redbullkingsley.com/ They even sell drinks. Surely next on the list for the brand enforcement manager.
Redbull is still 49% owned by the family of the guy who invented the original drink, but almost entirely run out of austria
The grandson of the inventor seems like a charmer [url= http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19464006 ]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19464006[/url]
Redbull can't identify a difference between a bovine and a supply of water, perhaps an explanation as to why their drink tastes like it does.
Friend had a similar problem with his Devon red bull cider (named after local bovine breed 😉 ), even though it was only being sold locally at the time their corporate solicitors threatened him with legal action and massive compensation claim.
whats that Red Bull in self promotion and getting more free ads....
Seems to be working for both companies there.
How the hell can you trademark a colour? Such as Red or indeed Orange?
That like saying you invented rectangles with rounded corners - just madness.....
How the hell can you trademark a colour? Such as Red or indeed Orange?
Park tools have a tm on the colour blue...
[url= http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/child-health/article3837934.ece ]This[/url] made me chuckle, Red Bull is considered a childrens drink?
not necessarily. If a company doesn't defend it's trademarks then this can set a precedent for future (possibly more important) cases and make them harder to defend against. Sucks to be the little guy in this case, but you can understand why RB aren't willing to potentially jeopardise a multi-million dollar brand by going easy on them.Over zealous brand protection department trying to justify their salaries.
Scrolling down the news page there is a follow-up, all sorted now by the look of it.
I want to know how they get away with saying it gives you wings in the adverts when it clearly doesn't . Hopefully 1 day somebody will jump out of a 10th floor window after drinking Red Bull , splatter themselves and the family sue Red Bull for misleading advertising .
I can say as a retail manager red bull does not sell, it sells worse than any other drink, about the same if not less than icetea. Mark up is huge though. No idea how they have so much money even so. Monster energy sells much much better.
[url= http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5323/9510933159_3c942a214c.jp g" target="_blank">
[url= http://www.flickr.com/photos/92694523@N06/9510933159/ ]image[/url] by [url= http://www.flickr.com/people/92694523@N06/ ]tom.howard.562[/url], on Flickr
Wtf...
now if Park Tools were Microsoft or Apple and I moved to a different region for a couple of years and the licensing rights for that region were a different colour half my tools wouldn't work unless I went out and bought the right colour ones
grumpy
Park trademarks their blue for bike tools. Pedro's is black and yellow, though less market share, and I assume that they trademarked that as well.
Therefore, if I decide to start selling bike tools, they can't be blue or black and yellow as that might cause confusion among the bike tool buying public. But if I do start selling tools in one of those color schemes, it is up to Park or Pedro's to defend their trademark. No doubt, a letter from a lawyer is the first step. A lawsuit may follow if the owner of the trademark can't be convinced that there isn't an infringement issue.
The color trademarks mentioned above only applies to the business sector of bike tools, though. For instance, the Pittsburgh Steelers (football) and Pittsburgh Pirated (baseball) teams both have had black and gold as their team colors for 70-100 years; long before Pedro's tools. But they are sports teams, not bike tool manufacturers so no trademark infringement on the part of Pedro's. And [url= http://www.channellock.com/pliers.aspx ]Channellock[/url] is a 100+ year old US manufacturer of tools (but not bike tools) and they use blue grips and such. And the name Channellock is trademarked...
reminds me of when sainsburys the supermarket tried to say that local department store of the same name was infringing the rights of the name.
mr sainsbury the owner of the department store ignored it right up till court then went in to court with the stores history and its been there trading under the family name in the town since long before sainsburys existed as a supermarket.
Oops
X Tools are blue? Does the shade of blue make a difference?
Apparently Red Bull have backed down on the condition that the brewery never makes energy drinks...!?
X Tools are blue? Does the shade of blue make a difference?
Possibly, if it was a dark blue. Businesses usually have a specific Pantone colour mix for their logo, etc, but to say that BLUE is part of their trade dress is a bit nebulous. It looks like out of the can cyan to me, rather than, say, PMS162, or whatever. (not sure what PMS162 actually is, that's just a number off the top of my head).
not sure what PMS162 actually is, that's just a number off the top of my head
Foreskin pink:
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I've been thinking about this, seems like opportunistic marketing by the brewery.
Big companies like Red Bull will send out hundreds of cease and desist letters every week, to try and maintain some semblance of control over the constant infringement (or perceived infringement anyway) of their IP rights.
Chances are, some low ranking employee is charged with putting together a list of "people we could/should have a chat with" and the in house lawyer/legal monkey has sent out a cease and desist letter.
Brewery owner opens it, is initially shocked, then realises this is reasonably newsworthy and calls a couple of media outlets. A couple of the nice, small team later and you've got an article which ticks all the right boxes for the newspaper and the marketing dept of the brewery (which no one would have heard of, but for this mountain-molehill thing)
Well done them if that's correct 🙂