30 May, 2007

Greece: The Greek Supreme Court has drawn a close to Budweiser Budvar’s dispute with its competitor in the matter of unfair competition

The Greek Supreme Court dismissed Budweiser Budvar’s appeal concerning the use of the “Budweiser Bürgerbräu” designation on beer labels of the Budejovicky Mestansky Pivovar’s (BMP) products sold in Greece, Budvar said in its press release, May 4. Budweiser Budvar considered BMP’s behaviour as unfair competition and tried to put a stop to it. The ruling is final.

“The grounds for the ruling are not available yet, therefore it is not known to us why the court did not acknowledge our arguments. However, we are surprised by the Greek court’s ruling, since courts in several other countries including the Czech Republic recognized our evidence for unfair competition in similar cases and subsequently banned such unfair competition,” says Budweiser Budvar’s lawyer, Helena Lejtnarová.

“We know from market research that customers are confused and products labelled “Budweiser Bürgerbräu” consider it as produced by our brewery,” adds Lejtnarová. Since Budweiser Budvar suffers economic loss arising from such competitor’s behaviour, several legal actions on the grounds of unfair competition against BMP’s use of the “Budweiser Bürgerbräu” designation have been filed in the last few years. Courts in Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia and Croatia previously ruled that BMP or its importers were committing unfair competition and banned them from using the “Budweiser Bürgerbräu” designation in beer sale.

Budweiser Budvar has had to defend its rights against BMP before in many legal disputes and administrative proceedings. Between 1992 and 2007, seventeen disputes have been finalized, 14 out of which were in favour of Budweiser Budvar.

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