unfair competition

Subscribe to unfair competition via RSS

Earlier this month, President Biden announced the formation of a “Strike Force on Unfair and Illegal Pricing.” This strike force will be an interagency group co-chaired by the FTC and DOJ. President Biden stated the group will focus on industries including “prescription drugs, health care, food and grocery, housing, [and] financial services.” While the exact makeup of the strike force is not clear, it has been reported that FTC Chair Lina Khan and Jonathan Kanter, Assistant Attorney General in the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, will co-chair it. 

Kim Kardashian has been hit with a lawsuit by New York-based Beauty Concepts LLC over Kardashian’s recently launched skincare line, “SKKN by Kim.”  Beauty Concepts filed a complaint in the Eastern District of New York against Kardashian, her business entity Kimsaprincess Inc., and beauty company Coty Inc. on Tuesday, alleging that SKKN by Kim uses branding “highly confusingly similar” to Beauty Concepts’ own skincare line, “SKKN+”.  The complaint further alleges that Beauty Concepts has priority of use over the letters “skkn” due to the company’s consistent use of the mark “SKKN+” since at least August 2018.

Salvation. The name of two intricate Belgian-style ales, created by us, Vinnie Cilurzo of Russian River Brewing and Adam Avery of Avery Brewing. After becoming friends a few years ago, we realized we both had a Salvation in our lineups. Was it going to be a problem? Should one of us relinquish the name rights? “Hell, no!” we said. In fact, it was quickly decided that we should blend the brews to catch the best qualities of each and create an even more complex and rich libation. In April 2004, in a top secret meeting at Russian River Brewing, we came up with the perfect blend of the two Salvations.

That, according to Avery Brewing Co., is how Collaboration Not Litigation Ale came into existence.

But the beer industry is not always so adept at avoiding the courtroom when it comes to trademark disputes.  Particularly with the explosion of the craft brewing industry in recent years, and the ever-increasingly creative names to come out of that market, legal disputes over beer trademarks are a dime a dozen.  The latest of these lawsuits to reach trial resulted in significantly more than a dime’s worth of recovery for craft brewer Stone Brewing.