A little over a month ago, we brought you news about a copyright slap fight between Sierra Nevada and brewery-in-waiting Narwhal Brewery. The fight is over now, according to The Brooklyn Paper, and not surprisingly, Sierra Nevada ended up winning this one. Henceforth, Narwhal Brewery shall be known as Finback Brewery. Adjust your tattoos accordingly.
Blasphemous as it is to say, it’s not exactly difficult to see Sierra Nevada’s point in this whole mess. When they were Narwhal, Basil Lee and Kevin Stafford forgot to file a federal copyright. Sierra Nevada had a product ready to go and didn’t want to change the name of it on the off-chance Narwhal got up and running. So they pressed on with their claim, and now Narwhal Brewery has rebranded themselves Finback Brewery, keeping with the theme of giant mammals. It’s also apparently named after a whale that beached in Queens last year, so we can expect a vodka named after Vito, the Gowanus dolphin, any day now.
When they were Narwhal, Lee and Stafford didn’t sound close to getting out of the home brewing stage, which is what it still sounds like now, according to their new website. Which, it should be pointed out, colors in a diagonal line in the “N” to passive aggressively still make it look like their whale logo has a Narwhal horn. With any luck, the two brewtrepreneurs will now manage to avoid getting snared in any more legal nets and be able to focus on making booze.
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They were angling for a win, but it came to an unsatisfactory fin-ish. They won’t use the name, narwhal they use the image. This doesn’t mean they’ll scale back beer production. But will they reel in customers? Rod says no, casting aspersions; but that’s up for de-bait.
And still single, ladies.
Sierra Nevada is a horrible monster… They took the name “Ruthless Rye IPA” from Barrier Brewing a while back.