Scott Green

I want to know what this country’s coming to when a humble little multinational conglomerate can’t sell its energy drink without some mom-and-pop brewery making a beverage whose name contains many of the same letters.

The Hansen Beverage Company, which makes Monster Energy Drink, learned the Rock Art Brewery, a small hard beverage company in Morrisville, Vermont, named its new beer “Vermonster.”  So Hansen did what any reasonable entity would do when someone introduces a product with a vaguely similar-sounding name:  ignored it and went on with its business.

Ha ha, no, of course that’s not what happened.  Hansen became concerned consumers would confuse Monster Energy Drink with Vermonster, on account of all the similarities:

1.  Neither beverage’s name contains the letters A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, P, Q, U, W, X, Y or Z.

2.  Both beverages are beverages.

So Hansen’s lawyers came to the only sensible conclusion, namely:  they should sue for trademark infringement.  This was their best course of action, which I say not only as a proud American, but as a proud American who is an attorney looking for work.

I studied trademarks in law school, but it’s difficult to say who might win the dispute because there are so many nuances, and I sold my textbook.  Regardless, from the news stories it seems the Hansen people have an airtight case, unless they lose.

Businesses do have to protect their trademarks from use by others, because otherwise the marks become “generic.”  This is fairly common.  Take Murphy beds.  Back in the late 1800s, a man named John Murphy had an idea:  why not copulate with his wife?  So he did, thereby producing a son, William Murphy, who years later invented a folding wall bed.

Murphy’s company, the Murphy Door Bed Company, made the product for years, but then other companies marketed their own folding wall beds as “Murphy beds.”  The Murphy Company sued for trademark infringement but lost because they’d let others use the mark so widely that consumers no longer associated the name “Murphy bed” with the Murphy company specifically.  They associated it with Monster Energy Drink.

So Hansen has to keep up the legal pressure, or else it will be unable to protect its product’s name from becoming a generic term for any foul-tasting, urine-colored energy beverage.  “Hey,” any enterprising young businessperson could otherwise say to himself, “I’m going to use ‘Monster’ to describe my own swill-like energy drink, and there’s nothing those Hansen Beverage Company people can do about it, hahahahaha!  Then I’m going to sleep with their wives.”

This was the same thought that motivates a speaker cable manufacturer named – I couldn’t make this stuff up – “Monster Cable.”  Last year Monster Cable sued, among other companies, Monster Mini Golf, an indoor glow-in-the dark course so-called because it features giant plexiglass cans of energy drink.

No, seriously, the course is lined with werewolves, vampires, mummies, trademark lawyers, etc., and therefore “monster” is a perfectly legitimate descriptive word for it.  So obviously Monster Cable had to sue to force Monster Mini Golf to change its name, and I’m sure it would’ve won, but after a wave of bad publicity it relented.  The cable company even reimbursed attorney fees after its CEO woke up with a glow-in-the dark zombie head in his bed.

Anyway, the Hansen Beverage Company struggles on, still on the prowl for potential lawsuits.  And they may have found a blockbuster.  An e-mail sent recently on Hansen’s behalf asked actor Trygve Lode to remove all advertising and sales of Monster Energy Drink from his Web site.

Of course, Lode isn’t advertising or selling anything.  What he did was post a photo on his site in which he holds a can of Monster Energy Drink while in costume as the monster from the film “The Shadow Walkers.”  But this is another slam dunk case for Hansen because, as even the dimmest wit can see, both Monster Energy Drink and Trygve Lode are composed entirely of molecules.

At this point these legal disputes are like shooting fish in a barrel for Hansen, an activity they’d probably enjoy.  It’s become a little dissatisfying to see the company defend its trademark against such easy opposition.  So what we need is a face-off between Monster Energy Drink and Monster Cable in the Monster Trademark Lawsuit Championship (trademark pending).  And they shouldn’t stop until the lawyers have every cent.

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