In closing arguments Wednesday of Stone Brewing’s trademark infringement case against Molson Coors, the San Diego craft brewery’s attorney Noah Hagey urged jurors to award his client $216 million, according to Courthouse News Service.
“What’s at risk now is what remains — whether Stone can return to what it is and what it is meant to be,” Hagey reportedly told jurors, who began deliberations Wednesday.
Last week, Stone co-founder Steve Wagner testified that he and co-founder Greg Koch could risk losing the company if their trademark infringement lawsuit is unsuccessful.
In his closing arguments, Hagey pointed to the “billions of cans” of Keystone Light that have hit the marketplace since 2017 “that have irreparably harmed Stone and all Stone has stood for.”
“When your name, when your soul is infected and has been appropriated by somebody else, it is a sickness,” he said. “There are a lot of ailments that go along with having the most important piece of your business attached to an entirely different product in a lower category.”
In Molson Coors’ closing argument, attorney John Bunge held up packages of Keystone Light and Stone offerings and asked jurors if a shopper would confuse the two offerings, Courthouse News Service reported.
“It’s a poor plan, a poor conspiracy because, for some reason, these conspirators put Keystone Light on the package over and over and over again,” he said.
Stone filed the trademark infringement lawsuit four years ago, with co-founder Greg Koch announcing its arrival in a bombastic video.
“In the world of beer, the name Stone is ours,” Koch proclaimed in the video.
During the trial, Stone’s attorneys presented a case that the San Diego-based craft brewery’s business had declined 20% since the 2017 rebrand of Keystone Light, which separated the words “Key” and “Stone” and emphasized the size of the latter word on the can packaging. They argued the change caused confusion among consumers and presented a video of a focus group to drive home the point.
Stone CEO Maria Stipp testified that the company owes investor VMG/Hillhouse $464 million, with a repayment date of June 2023. Stipp noted that VMG/Hillhouse had been lenient on the payback date and said she was not given a timeline. Nevertheless, she said Stone’s struggles in recent years had led the company to consider a potential sale.
For its part, attorneys for Molson Coors throughout the three-week trial pointed to the company’s history of using “stone” and “stones” in its marketing dating back to the mid-1990s, prior to the founding of Stone in 1996. They argued that the company would have little to gain from masquerading its lower-priced economy light lager as a higher-priced craft IPA made no sense. And they said the 2017 rebrand was due to declining sales in an effort to compete with other economy brands, such as Anheuser-Busch’s Natural Light.
Molson Coors also argued that there was little overlap with their consumers — half of whom are unemployed and a quarter of whom earn less than $30,000 annually, Molson Coors said — and Keystone Light’s fortunes improved with the release of 15-packs.
More coverage: Listen to Harris Beach Partner Brendan Palfreyman discuss the Stone-Molson Coors trademark infringement case on the Brewbound Podcast.