A Legal Case of the Mondays
Whether you found Coors Light’s Case of the Mondays promotion and sloth-filled Super Bowl commercial funny or clever, Atlanta’s Monday Night Brewing most certainly did not. As owner’s of the trademark to “Monday Night” in regards to its application on a beer label/branding since 2010 and creators of an IPA Variety Pack called “Case of the Mondays” since 2014, it’s hard to blame them for being agitated. In addition to the identical fanciful name of each 12-pack, the proximity of Monday Night and Mondays Light is also worth pointing out.
After sending a Cease & Desist to Molson Coors, Monday Night Brewing took to their Instagram account to share the response. Their post included the following copy:
We did what we were supposed to do to protect ourselves from vultures and imitators.
Well, I guess that isn’t enough. Craft breweries are dropping like flies, for many reasons. But this type of big business bullshit is the equivalent to getting kicked when you’re already down.
We wanted to share with you Molson Coors’ “lawyer logic” for how they justify screwing us without recourse. “It’s just a one time thing” and “It’s already done” sound like some real convenient arguments.
Remember, this is the same brewery that has done this kind of thing in the past. Thankfully, Stone Brewing successfully sued Molson Coors.
The post contains an additional 5 slides that share each page of the response from the Molson Coors attorneys.
While I would never want to be in a position to be sharing official legal correspondences on social media, if it was my business and life’s work involved, who am I to say that I wouldn’t do the same? Molson Coors is defending their situation with the temporary, short run nature of the promotion, pointing out the lack of similarity of their branding and their iconic Coors Light branding that predate Monday Night Brewing. They also point out a few uses of “Monday” by other breweries.
While I deal with trademark correspondences a couple times per month, I am still far from an expert on all the nuances of individual cases and thus it makes no sense for me to give any sort of legal opinion here. In addition to the 10+ year history of the variety pack, the fact that Monday Night and Mondays Light rhyme gives me additional sympathy for the craft brewery here, regardless of what the letter says. Additionally, we can safely assume that if Monday Night Brewing ever danced similarly as close to Coors Light’s marks, they would have received a similar letter of their own.
These situations are such unfortunate distractions and most fans, especially the majority who do not understand trademark law and the importance of defending marks, often side with the defendant. Unlike the Stone vs. Keystone case that contained many years of built up damages, the short term nature of this campaign is unlikely to make financial sense to battle over. However, given the number of eyeballs on that Super Bowl commercial, it’s possible I’m wrong there. At the very least, hopefully Monday Night is able to at least gain some goodwill and brand awareness in exchange for the legal bills that have started to stack up from these correspondences to defend their trademark.