Page 7 - Beverage MasterFebMarch 2021_Update

Legal & Marketing

How Your Intellectual Property

Can Make or Break a Merger

By: Ashley Earle, Attorney, Dinsmore & Shohl
L ike a good recipe, a good brand name for define the different types of IP that exist:

a beer, wine, or other beverage can drive
sales. That recipe, distilling process, bottle
design, or logo is all a form of intellectual • Trademarks: A trademark is the most common
form of IP protection in the alcoholic beverage
property that helps define who you are in the indus- industry. It protects anything that functions as
try. It can also be a defining and important part of a source identifier, (product names, company
any transaction. names, logos like the NBC peacock, bottle or can
designs like the Coca-Cola bottle, or even sounds
In today’s COVID world, breweries, wineries and like the ESPN tones). Trademarks can be reg-
distilleries of all types are doing what they have to istered and unregistered, though unregistered
in order to survive and one day thrive. Some are marks are limited in geographic scope.
turning to mergers and acquisitions as potential
strategies for survival and success. It’s important to • Patents: This protects a unique invention (a
know how your intellectual property (IP) can make a brewing process, a novel distillation column), a
difference, good and bad, to a potential deal. Below unique design (bottle designs), or a unique plant
are the five things you need to know about IP in a (strains of yeast or grapes). Patents must be
merger or acquisition. registered and issued to be enforceable, though
What Is IP? pending applications will be relevant in an M&A
deal.
Before we get there, it’s important to quickly

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