If you’ve ever been to the Czech Republic, odds are you’re familiar with their most common beer, Budweiser. But this isn’t the same watery brew you begrudgingly pay $7 for on Friday nights. This is a wholly different company with Czech roots and a beer far superior to the Anheuser-Busch swill — and yesterday they won a legal battle over trademark ownership in Germany (which butts up against the Czech Republic).
In 1895, the Czech Budweiser began brewing a beer that Americans will only know as Czechvar (well, there’s more to this — we’ll explain later), unless you’ve traveled to Prague and seen the huge Budweiser sign looming over the town square and know it from that. It’s clearly of a different family than the American Bud.
Anyway, for decades the two companies have been fighting over who owns the name. Awhile back it was decided that AmBud got to use the name in the US and some parts of Europe, but the rest of Europe belongs to CzBud. But the American Bud, being the greedy jackhats they are, just couldn’t resist the temptation to spread their piss water into Germany — though we doubt their BudLightLime brand will do well there. At any rate, they recently brought a case forward arguing that they should get to advertise the Budweiser name.
History
The Czech beer is from a town that used to be in Germany called Budweis. Anyone from that town is therefore known as a Budweiser. So for AmBud to enter the space would just be confusing and the local brew could get hurt by the whole thing. Can’t Bud just be happy that they’ve convinced the entire US that their beer is good?
The story gets a little complicated because way back in the 1700s there were two Budweiser brands in the town of Budweis (making a total of 3 Budweiser brewers, just not at once). At some point, one of them rose to the top — but ever since the late 1800s, AmBud and CzBud have been battling for the ownership rights.
Case Dismissed
But AmBud lost and now that this case is over, a flack says they are “considering their legal options.” How about they consider giving up on this futile attempt? Sometimes you just have to be happy with what you’ve got — it’s amazing enough that their beer sells as much as it does stateside, so just go to bed happy, y’all. Oh, and AmBud has to pay CzBud’s legal fees, which is nice.
Da Beers
Here’s why the CzBud is better — it’s not made from rice and it comes in a 1 liter bottle. Oh, and it costs about .25 cents a bottle, and tastes nothing like water. Few of the AmBud brands can say that — save for the lime stuff, which tastes like Lysol.
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