A Tiny Czech Brewery Has Been Beating Budweiser in Court for Over a Century

The name "Budweiser" means "of Budweis," and Budweis is a Czech city. Its Czech name is Ceske Budejovice, and it has been brewing beer since 1265, when King Ottokar II founded the city and granted it the right to brew as one of its first privileges.

In 1876, Adolphus Busch co-founded Anheuser-Busch in St. Louis and borrowed the name for his American lager. In 1895, the Czech brewery Budejovicky Budvar was established. Both have been calling their beer "Budweiser" ever since.

The lawsuits started around 1906. They have never stopped.

The Numbers

As of 2013, Budvar had won 89 of 124 trademark disputes with Anheuser-Busch (now AB InBev). By 2016, the tally had expanded to 136 wins out of 197 total proceedings. The Czech brewery, a state-owned operation producing a fraction of AB InBev's volume, has consistently outperformed the world's largest beer company in courtrooms across the globe.

Budvar holds exclusive rights to the "Budweiser" name in dozens of countries. In most of the European Union, AB InBev cannot use the name at all and must sell as "Bud." The exceptions include Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Spain, and the UK, where both can use the name simultaneously.

Why Budvar Keeps Winning

The Czech brewery has a simple argument: we were here first. The city of Budweis has been brewing for over 750 years. The name belongs to the place, not to a company in Missouri that borrowed it 600 years later.

European trademark law tends to agree. Geographic names carry significant weight in EU intellectual property rulings, and "Budweiser" is inherently geographic.

Still Fighting

AB InBev has annual revenues exceeding $50 billion. Budvar is a state-owned brewery with roughly $200 million in annual sales. The legal budgets are not comparable. And yet, more than a century after the first lawsuit, the tiny Czech brewery with the original name continues to win more often than it loses.

In much of the world, if you order a Budweiser, you're getting Czech beer. The American version goes by "Bud." That one word cost AB InBev over a century of legal fees and they still haven't won it back.