MillerCoors Sued by Stone Brewing Over Product Name

After a recent rebrand gone wrong, the MillerCoors beer company is facing a lawsuit by San Diego-based brewery Stone, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The issue the company has relates to MillerCoors’ Keystone Light brand of beer. A redesign of the cans the beer is stored inside has changed its layout, presenting the brand’s name vertically on each can with each syllable of the name getting its own line. Because of this, if the can is rotated a certain way, the only part of the name that would be visible would be the “Stone” part, with the redesign going so far as to emphasize that aspect even more by putting it in the largest and boldest font on the can.

While it’s entirely possible this was just a coincidence on the part of MillerCoors, Stone Brewing’s chief executive, Dominic Engels, says that it’s “no accident.” He claims that MillerCoors allegedly attempted to register the name Stone as a trademark for the company a few years ago but was rejected due to Stone have already done so. Now, he believes that this rebranding is intentional on the company’s part to try and have its cake and eat it too, emphasizing the “Stone” aspect of the name and using it almost exclusively (that is, without the “Key”) on social media to promote the brand.

MillerCoors, on the other hands, refutes this and calls the lawsuit a publicity stunt. According to spokesman Marty Maloney, the brewery’s customers have referred to their beer as “Stone” for years prior to the actual Stone brewery opening in 1996. Whether this is evidence enough to defeat Stone’s claims of deceptive advertising in court, though, remains to be seen. The co-founder of Stone Greg Koch, however, says that this can all be put to rest immediately with one simple action: Putting the “Key” back into the “Keystone” brand.

Stone was founded as one of several craft beer brewers during the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This movement was quite popular in California, with Stone and several other companies gaining increasing widespread attention and popularity over the years. As a result, larger beer companies have often found themselves competing for sales to the point of buying out the craft breweries to eliminate competition. With this in mind, Stone’s claims of misleading advertisement aimed at taking their business don’t seem quite so far fetched, though the final call will ultimately be a judge’s.