Anheuser-Busch Wins Another Budweiser Round In 100-Year Fight Against Czech Brewer

It seems Goliath has won this bout with David, if you consider Anheuser-Busch InBev to be well, a giant towering over a Czech brewery fighting for the right to call its beer Budweiser. Over here in America we mostly only ever see the King of Beers we’re used to, but in Europe, it’s a whole other long, contentious story.

The General Court of the European Union dismissed the claims of Czech brewery Budejovicky Budvar, which has been calling one of its brews Budweiser for centuries that Anheuser-Busch shouldn’t be able to call its stuff Budweiser in certain areas.

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the court said that Budvar didn’t prove that it had used the name Budweiser enough to call it its own before Anheuser-Busch applied for a trademark in 1996.

“We are extremely pleased to have confirmed our right to a Bud trademark registration valid throughout the entire European Union,” Belgium-based A-B InBev said in a statement. “This ruling is majorly important in that it will expand our already strong global protections for Bud and Budweiser. While there are only a few countries in Europe where we do not have a registration for Bud or Budweiser, this registration will fill in those few remaining gaps.”

Basically — if there’s anywhere that used to just have Czech Budweiser, well, now it might get the other kind too.

The two have been duking it out over Bud for about 106 years and have had various agreements come and go. Time for another round?

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