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Bud - now the truth can be told, Part I

By Jeremy

On Tuesday 19 February the IPKat, despairing of having to write up yet another piece of Budweiser litigation, offered a copy of the 8th edition of the Butterworths Intellectual Property Law Handbook both to the author of (i) the best 150-words-or-less summary of the decision and (ii) the best Bud-related haiku.

The summaries will be dealt with by a subsequent blog, As for the haikus, there were some excellent entries -- including many that followed the conventional rules for writing a haiku (or plain 'haiku', as we cognoscenti say). Stuart D'Aloisio had two stabs. First, he essayed this:

It's only a name
No-one drinks you anyway
Have a beer instead.

Then, with a little hindsight, and some enthusiasm for his damning middle line, he added "actually this one might be better, although it's a bit biased":

It's just their town's name
No-one drinks you anyway
Later rights should lose

Craig Smith, in contrast, retracted his earlier offering before submitting this:

It is not Czech mate,
Well it is confusing Bud,
Another fight brews?

A very distinguished London lawyer, who begs to remain anonymous but whose haikus must be the most expensive in the Western World if his charge-out rate is anything to go by, got the Kats into a giggling fit with this:

Bengoshi-san:
"Budobaru, Anhoisaa Bussho,
Arigato gozaimasu."

The author modestly says "... but I'm not sure that it has mass-market appeal". Certainly it is not as populist as the offering from regular correspondent Miri Frankel, who weighs in with

Oh, where in the world?!
Can someone please summarize
which Bud prevailed where?

and again with

Which Bud is for you?
This Bud. That Bud? The Czech Bud.
Check Bud? Hey Abbot!

the Abbot being, the Kat suspects, a cultural allusion to Messrs Abbott & Costello, one of whom was indeed a Bud. Less delicate and more exuberant, but with a gleeful reference to what some regard as Budweiser's ultimate fate and others see as its main ingredient, Steven Hartman declaims:

Billions for Busch war
Budvar courts insurgency
I pee with delight

Then there's this from someone who signs himself simply "James" (could it be he of Nurton fame?), who proposes:

Litigious parties.
Same brand so huge kerfuffle.
Happy lawyers, no?

Ruth Soetendorp came with this on a long (and, one imagines, dry) car journey:

Keep thirst in czeck
with bud or bud, bud weiser
by var drink water

Shabtai Atlow capped a valiant argument that the rules for writing haiku should be ignored, or at least generously bent, citing no less an authority on the subject than Jack Kerouac himself, before producing this:

Budejovicky's brew
likely deceives or confuses?
Anheuser-Busch whacked.

Two Tims come next. From Tim Lucas there's a truly classical haiku, incorporating a reference to the seasons and the weather:

A bud in winter:
the tussle of old and new
lingers year on year.

Not to be outdone, Tim Roberts makes a nod to the shifts in UK trade mark law that have seen the end of concurrent use (one of those concepts that worked fine in practice but not in theory):

Now concurrent use
Leaves the later registrant
Sadder Budweiser

In David Fyfield's case it's the beer, rather than the weather, that contains the climatic allusion:

Frosty beer brewers
Dispute trade marks old and new
Appealing conclusion

Finally, from the Olympian heights of the IP Bar comes John Baldwin QC, who alludes to the large amount of money derived by his colleagues from the Budweiser dispute (John was not involved in this spat: if you want to see who was, click here):

Budweiser Budvar
Fat wallets on great lawyers
Fat tum otherwise.

Disqualified, for being a limerick rather than a haiku, but included because it's good fun, is this piece of poesy from Steven. M. Getzoff, an old acquaintance who must surely owe him at least one beer:

Two beery eyed boozers named Bud
both fought 'til each fell with a thud.
One cannot imagine the broke glasses and flagons
all for the name of some suds.

The IPKat awards the Golden Palm to Tim Lucas, to whom a copy of the Butterworths IP Law Handbook will soon be winging its way; special commendations go to Steven Hartman and Tim Roberts. Merpel meanwhile thanks all the contestants for making the effort to make the IP environment more fun than it would otherwise be.

Full post as published by IPKat on March 02, 2008 (boomark / email).