BRATTLEBORO — Law often has very little to do with common sense, and often small businesses find themselves trapped in a costly hell where logic and reason have little if anything to do with the situation.
Rock Art Brewery, a small Vermont family business built on the backbreaking work of its husband-and-wife founders, which manufactures a beer it called “Vermonster,” found itself staring down billion-dollar Hansen corporation. An attorney for the manufacturer of energy drinks demanded that Rock Art immediately halt production and distribution of its product and pay legal costs, under threat of further legal action.
In a slightly different case, this summer, Eagle Publishing in Claremont, N.H., publisher of the former Message for the Week, abruptly declared bankruptcy and suspended publication of all its titles, including the Chester-based weekly. Unwilling to wait for a resolution, and fielding phone calls from multiple suitors wishing to enter the fray, its unemployed staff moved forward and launched The Messenger in Bellows Falls.
Now, with Sample Publications publishing the Eagle-Times once again and planning to relaunch the Message, the new owners drew a similar line in the sand.
The law appears to be on the side of Sample Publications, and the new name might even be better for the new paper in the long run. But with plans for The Messenger under way before the New Hampshire bankruptcy court's sale of the former Eagle Publishing assets, Sample Publications might have recognized that the free market responded to the void. The name fiasco aside, the new Message will compete against a publication that exists only because it failed in the first place.
As for the Vermonster: A groundswell of public furor, built up through communication tools like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, resulted in merchant boycotts, shareholder concern, and, ultimately, Rock Art's owner, Matt Nadeau, and Monster's president talking and negotiating a common-sense agreement that protected what was really important.
For Hansen's part, a company press release points out that it “has not, and does not, target or single out one company over any other, nor distinguish between big or small companies or individuals when enforcing our trademarks."
Yet Ben and Jerry's sells the Vermonster sundae, apparently without confusion.
Here's hoping that this case gives pause to the next intellectual property lawyer scanning databases of trademark registrations and firing off harassing, common-sense-defying letters to small businesses. That's a chilling effect we can all get behind.