Brewery Sues Over Marketing of Underwear

The “King of Beers” is upset over a Canadian novelty company that stuffed men’s underwear into bottles and sold them under the name Bumweiser.

Anheuser-Busch, the giant American brewery, went to court last week to claim that the bottles look too much like its Budweiser beer containers. A judge postponed the case for a month.

The legal battle began in 1988, when someone at the St. Louis-based brewery saw the underwear jammed into a plastic bottle similar in shape and markings to Budweiser’s.

The company sought $215,000 from the underwear’s maker, Waterloo-based Sterling Distributors, for infringement of copyright, and won a court injunction banning sales of Bumweiser in 1989.

Brian Wilson, Sterling’s president, changed the name to Beerbriefs and continued to sell the product in North America and England.