Following a trademark complaint, a Utah brewery is stopping production of one of its beers, the Deseret IPA. Bewilder Brewing Co. in Salt Lake City announced after the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church, issued a trademark complaint.
Cody McKendrick, co-owner of Bewilder Brewing Co., spoke about the trademark infringement complaint. He said the church gave the brewery a few months to cease production of its Deseret IPA. Also, the brewery has to sell its remaining beer store in a few months.
In addition, it also must not pursue registering the name with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to a newsletter the brewery sent out, Bewilder filed a trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the name last August. However, it abandoned the trademark after the church and several affiliated businesses filed as “potential opposers.”
“They claimed to have some food and beverage offerings and were afraid of marketplace confusion,” McKendrick said. “In the world of being threatened by legal action, just being asked to sell your product and not make it again isn’t probably the worst.”
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Also, McKendrick noted that the complaint didn’t affect the brewery financially. He said, “They didn’t try to come at us and recover money or say we damaged their brand or anything.” However, he added that the whole thing was “frustrating.”
McKendrick also revealed that he and co-owner Ross Metzger aren’t Latter-day Saints. But he said they grew up in communities that skewed heavily that way. In addition, McKendrick said they weren’t trying to make fun of Utah’s predominant faith by naming their beer Deseret.
Instead, he said with the Deseret IPA, they wanted to make a beer for local people with a local tie-in. Hence, they used local honey, locally grown grain, and malted the beer locally. However, “deseret” comes from the Book of Mormon, the town’s signature scripture.
Coincidentally, the word means “honey bee,” which is a part of the beer’s recipe. Hence, in October 2023, the brewery received a letter from Tyson Smith, an attorney at Texas-based Pirkey Barber. The letter said Bewilder’s use of the word “Deseret” could cause confusion.
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Also, it said people might believe the brewery’s beer is affiliated with LDS Church-owned companies such as Deseret Book, Deseret News, Deseret Industries, and others. According to reports, several local businesses use the word “deseret” despite not having an apparent affiliation with the church.
Hence, it may have been the association with alcohol that prompted the LDS Church to file an opposition. However, the trademark dispute is not holding Bewilder back. McKendrick called the situation a “great opportunity” to create new beers. The new beer, McKendrick said, would be a hoppy West Coast-style pilsner called Big Crispy.
Until then, there are still several cans of Deseret IPA in the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services’ system. Even if Bewilder wanted to protect Deseret IPA, McKendrick said, “We don’t have the resources to fight back.” Also, he said, “We’re not trying to drag anybody down to build ourselves up.”
Consequently, Bewilder filed an express abandonment to drop their application for the trademark in November 2023. Also, McKendrick said he and Metzger have tentative plans to rename Deseret IPA. He said they might release it as a seasonal or one-off beer because it has “a bit of a following.”
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