Rock Art Brewery vs. MONSTER

So this doesn't directly deal with beer in Japan, but it does deal with real beer made by real people.

Meet Matt and Renee Nadeau, a husband and wife couple brewing good beer in Vermont. They started Rock Art Brewery, to share their passion of brewing great brews with their good beer loving friends in beautiful Northeastern America. They have grown their business and their clientele, and by all accounts are doing really well.

Meet their The Vermonster, a very popular American barley wine that has great reviews on the web, as well as beeradvocate. I have never seen this beer in Japan, or even Kentucky--and I think Rock Art have a relatively small distribution area limited to the Northeast.

All was going well for Rock Art, until September 14, 2009 when soft drink and energy drink producer Hansens, the makers of Monster Energy, issued a cease and desist order to Rock Art Brewery because the name "The Vermonster" infringes on its intellectual property rights.

Now, as they say, the plot thickens. Monster Energy is a division of Hanson Beverage Company, however the Monster and Hansen sites don't say much of anything about each other. However, you can find Monster listed here, on the Anheuser Busch site. That's because Hansen and AB have an on premise sales and distribution deal. What does that mean to you and me? It's hard to say exactly, and it's hard to say who is calling the shots behind the scenes of Monster now, but Monster and Bud are linked at the hip for sure.

Back to tiny Rock Art. It appears that "Monster Energy" is looking to get into the alcohol market, and they are looking to get rid of any other 'monsters' out there before they do. Sure Rock Art holds the beer trademark for "The Vermonster" in Vermont, but Hansen (AB/Monster/?) says that this will cause confusion for those looking to buy the Monster Energy drink and possibly one day an alcoholic Monster product.

What can Rock Art do? Rock Art has a trivial amount of production and profit compared to these other corporate giants. A family owned brewery can't spend the money that it would take to even begin to fight the giants. After all, they are REAL working people who have jobs to do. Hansen knows that it would be much easier (and cheaper!) for Rock Art to just give in than to try and fight them.

So what did Rock Art do, you say??? Fight, say I. And Fight well. They took to the medium that has become the great equalizer......the web. Facebook, Twitter, and blogosphere are buzzing about this issue. Facebook groups have been started, Monster boycotts have been put in place, stores have begun to remove Monster from the shelves.....

Nadeau says this: “This is a fight about principles and to tell corporate America that our justice system is not for sale. We, the people, hold the power and we have the tools to combat your deep pockets.”

Nadeau has a point. Just because a corporation has the means to tie a matter up in expensive litigation, doesn't mean that it should get its way--especially at the expense of others.

What can you do? You can contact Hansens. You can tell them to shove Monster where the sun don't shine. You can offer up some encouragement for Rock Art here: ROCKART@PWSHIFT.COM. Most importantly, you can NOT BUY Monster.

Let's hope that Rock Art Brewery can keep "The Vermonster" name and come out of this thing alive. If one thing is for certain, it is that Hansen has been the greatest marketing tool that Matt Nadeau could have ever dreamed of. More people are talking about Rock Art now than ever....

Here's a video that Matt put up on his site:

And that my friends, is how you stick it to the man...