A few days ago BeerSweden broke the news that UK brewery Fuller’s had threatened legal action against Swedish microbrewery Sigtuna Brygghus unless it removed the acronym ESB from bottles of its ESB Extra Sigtuna Bitter.
BeerSweden contacted Fuller’s to ask for their side of the story and the brewery’s Export Controller Michael Campbell-Lamerton issued the following statement:
”Fuller’s first launched ESB in 1971 and the beer has become a classic both in the UK and in our export markets. Fuller’s has owned this trademark in both the UK and Europe for many years and naturally, the company will seek to protect it.
”We are grateful to Sigtuna Brygghus for their co-operation in this matter and wish them luck with the beer, whatever alternative name they choose to use.”
Fair enough.
My thoughts exactly Magnus!
Anyway, I think it is infelicitous that a style is named after a registered trademark. When it comes to ”Steam Beer”, we got the awkward replacement ”California Common”, but what should replace ”ESB”? ”Strong Bitter” gives associations with ”Stong Ale”, I think.
That’s odd, go to ratebeer.com and search for ESB, it saturates the search results (more than 100 hits)!
@Albert – that’s because Fuller’s trademark only applies in Europe and doesn’t extend to the US, where they are free to use the term ESB.