SweetWater sues city for trademark breach
The Milledgeville Mainstreet Downtown Development Authority is being sued by SweetWater Brewing Company for alleged trademark violation of the name “sweetwater.”
The case refers to the use of the “sweetwater” name in the title of an annual Milledgeville event titled Sweetwater Festival. Sometime in November, the beer company filed suit in federal court in Macon. In mid-December the Milledgeville Mainstreet Downtown Development Authority filed a return statement. The case is continuing to move forward into what is called the discovery phase, in which evidence is introduced by each side of the case.
The current stance of the MMDDA is that they do not believe they are in trademark violation and they are currently “planning for Sweetwater Festival 2008 as normal,” said Heather Holder, the director of the MMDDA.
In a letter sent to the media from the beer company, SweetWater Brewery stated, “We tried to be reasonable and resolve this dispute for two years, but Mainstreet has refused to be reasonable and they continue to violate our rights. We have invested too much time, money and effort in building our brand to allow this.”
The city’s annual event, which is usually held the first weekend of November, is a community-wide effort to bring life, culture and increased business to the Milledgeville downtown area, according Holder. A similar festival had previously been held in Milledgeville for about eight years and was known as the ‘Fest-of-Ville’. In 2004, the event was given a new façade, was renamed Sweetwater Festival, and since then has grown in unprecedented ways.
Since the name change of the festival, many new things were added to the agenda and the overall tone of the event to include many more vendors, big-name live entertainment, and most notably it is the first time that open containers of alcohol have been allowed on the streets of downtown Milledgeville.
According to Holder, the name of the Milledgeville festival came from a historical story of the city that claims that the original settlers of the area would combine whiskey with water from a natural flowing spring and called the concoction “sweetwater.”
Sweetwater Brewing Company was on the list of co-sponsors in the 2004 festival. They were just one of the beer company products being sold at the festival that day. In the following years that the festival has been held until current, the Sweetwater Brewing Company has not been present at the festival again. The relationship between the city and the beer company remained in tact but seemed rather diminished between 2004 and 2007, with the beer company’s products still being sold in local Milledgeville businesses and stores.
“SweetWater’s sponsorship of these events and festivals does not give the festival organizers the right to continue using the SWEETWATER(r) brand without SweetWater’s approval,” stated the beer company’s letter to the media, which claims that the festival continued to use actual beer company logos long after they were not apart of the festivities.
Since the beer company filed suit in November, many local businesses and stores have stopped selling SweetWater Brewing Company products. Now, places like The Brick, Buffington’s, and ROC’s Cork Shop have decided to either sell out or just stop serving any SweetWater Brewing Company products in support of the MMDDA’s stance in the case.
Holder said that if students enjoy the Sweetwater Festival and would like to see it remain as is in Milledgeville, then they can show their support by expressing their feelings to the beer company through appropriate letters and comments.
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 22 2008. Filed under News.
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