Boston Beer Co. v. Slesar Bros. Brewing Co.

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• explaining that “[a] court’s inquiry into whether a term merits trademark protection starts with the classification of that term along the spectrum of ‘distinctiveness’ ”
• stating that mark achieves secondary meaning when a “significant quantity of the consuming public understand the name as referring exclusively to the appropriate party”
• noting that \the clear error hurdle is . . . quite high.\ (quoting Lenn v. Portland Sch. Comm., 998 F.2d 1083, 1087 (1st Cir. ___________________ 1993)
• explaining that descriptive terms are entitled to trademark protection only upon attaining secondary meaning
• stating that such terms are considered “inherently distinctive” (citation omitted)
• stating “consumer surveys and testimony are the only direct evidence on this question”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).