Late last year, the President signed the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Act of 2020, which made most of the Craft Beverage Modernization and Tax Reform Act (“CBMTRA”) provisions permanent starting January 1, 2021. The CBMTRA makes extensive changes to the federal excise taxes on wine, distilled spirits, and beer.
Continue Reading Significant Tax Credits for the Alcoholic Beverage Industry
Agency Extends Relief to Prevent Unintended Tax Burden on Custom-Crush Facilities and Bonded Wine Cellars
As we wrote about earlier this month, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R. 1) passed late last year included significant, temporary federal excise tax relief for wine, beer and spirits businesses for 2018 and 2019. Unfortunately, in an apparent oversight of legislative drafting, the wine excise tax relief (provided in the form of
2017 Changes to Utah Liquor Laws
Significant changes are on the way for Liquor Laws in Utah. H.B. 442 passed the legislature on March 8, 2017 and Governor Herbert signed it into law March 29, 2017. The new law makes numerous changes to how restaurants, dining clubs and off-premise beer retailers will operate. These changes will create opportunities for some, and present significant challenges for others. Following is a summary of some of the more meaningful changes for businesses. Note that the law affects many licensees though, so we encourage anyone who sells alcohol in Utah to discuss the changes with their attorney.
Restaurants and Bars
The law replaces the current Restaurant – Dining Club – Social Club structure with two categories: Restaurants and Bars, making Dining Clubs obsolete. Bars and restaurants will have to start displaying an 8.5 x 11 sign declaring that they are either a bar or a restaurant, and not the other.
On the good news front, restaurants will be able to choose how they want to operate their own bars from the following three options:
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Raising water conservation awareness by drinking beer
Clean Water Services (CWS), a water resources management utility in the Tualatin River Watershed, has been creatively exploring a new opportunity for the brewery industry. CWS is taking beneficial reuse of water to a new level by proposing the reuse of recycled water in the brewing process, a proposal first approved by the Oregon Health Authority in September 2014.
The reuse of recycled water in the brewing process has found support in various Oregon organizations: tests showed that the proposed treatment presents very low risk to human health, promotes the importance of conserving water, promotes the need to engage a dialogue about potable reuse, and would help meeting the growing demand for beers. The proposal has the potential to create a new market but raises a few issues.
Health and Sanitary Concerns
The recycled water must be treated to meet or exceed all regulated drinking water contaminant criteria. The analysis regarding the recycled water used to brew small batches of beer revealed that the water was at least as pure and clean as regular water used from municipal resources, and the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission approved the experimentation. A round of public comments on the question was held mid-April 2015. One of the concerns was that wastewater contains “emerging contaminants” that are not regulated by the Safe Drinking Water Act or the Clean Water Act, and consequently, while the recycled water could meet technical drinking water requirements, it still could pose a threat to human health because some of the contaminants are not addressed in those requirements.
The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is currently revising CWS’s permit requirements to address these issues and make sure that all risks to human health are eliminated when using recycled water in beer production.
Continue Reading Raising water conservation awareness by drinking beer
Five Important Trademark Lessons the Beverages Trade Learned in 2014
The folks at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (“PTO”) received nearly half a million trademark applications last year. These applications included thousands of new filings by breweries, vineyards, wineries, and distilleries. Here are five important lessons we learned from last year’s decisions by various trademark tribunals about protecting and registering your mark in the beer, wine or spirits industries.
Continue Reading Five Important Trademark Lessons the Beverages Trade Learned in 2014
Despite What You May Think, “IPA” Really Could Have Been a Trademark for Beer
Can one brewery sue another to stop them from using a stylized version of “IPA,” a familiar acronym for the popular style of beer known as India Pale Ale? As you may have heard, the Lagunitas Brewing Co. just tried . . . and it didn’t go so well. But things could have worked out very differently if Lagunitas had raised its claims back in 1995, a time when Lagunitas says it was the only one using “IPA” to market an India Pale Ale.
On Monday, The Lagunitas Brewing Co. filed suit against fellow California craft brewery Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. for trademark infringement in an attempt to prevent Sierra Nevada from rolling out a new label for Sierra Nevada’s “Hop Hunter IPA”. Lagunitas claimed Sierra Nevada’s label depicted “IPA” in a style that was too similar to the way “IPA” appears on the label of Lagunitas’ flagship “Lagunitas IPA”.
Sierra Nevada’s design, Lagunitas argued, “uses all capital, large, bold, black ‘IPA’ lettering in a font selection that is remarkably similar to the Lagunitas design” and was likely to create confusion among consumers as to the origin of Sierra Nevada’s product.
By Wednesday, Lagunitas had dropped the case, citing the overwhelming public uproar over its claims: “Today was in the hands of the ultimate court; The Court of Public Opinion and in it we got an answer to our Question; Our flagship IPA’s registered federal trademark has limits.
Continue Reading Despite What You May Think, “IPA” Really Could Have Been a Trademark for Beer