Is “Steam” Trademark Lawsuit Just Hot Air?

Hartford’s historic Cheney building, home to the City Steam Café. The brewery is facing a lawsuit for trademark infringement from a California beer maker for use of the word “steam” on its bottled products. Public domain photo by Daderot.

A lawsuit filed in the U.S. federal district court in New Haven Jan. 27 by a California brewing company against a Hartford-based microbrewery hinges on whether the word “steam” is an inherently distinctive mark protected from infringement by trademark law.

The Anchor Brewing Company has had a federally registered trademark for a stylized version of the words “steam beer” since the late 1970’s. It claims that Connecticut's City Steam Brewery is stepping on its toes by shipping its own signature flavors with the “steam” moniker around New England and New York.

This is hardly Anchor's first attempt to stop other beer companies from using the term. It has even succeeded in changing beer classification names in its home state. But City Steam is the first that has been willing to go to court to fight back.

To understand the positions of both companies, it is necessary to understand the history of steam beer. The details of the name's origin are not entirely clear, but it developed in Northern California during the mid-1800's as an improvised method of open-air brewing where cooling systems were not yet available. It came to denote a process of brewing bottom-fermenting yeasts at higher than ordinary temperatures more appropriate for lager fermentation.

Steam beer would be unrecognizable to drinkers of Anchor's products today. Technological changes ended the old steam beer market long ago. When California brewers sought to mimic these flavors in the twentieth century, they produced much more refined, high-end beers.

Anchor, which already had its trademark on steam beer, cornered the use of the name in California. Today, brewers inspired by their steam beer forebears call their products “California Common Beer.”

The distinction between historic steam beer and Anchor's modern variety is instrumental to its trademark claims. If steam remained, as it was then, a purely descriptive part of the beer brewing, it would be difficult for Anchor to gain trademark privileges for the word. But today, one could argue that the word is arbitrary (it has no relation to the product to which it is attached) in reference to Anchor. This would make it inherently distinctive and therefore open to registration as a trademark.

An ancillary argument might be that the word “steam” has acquired a secondary meaning (another way to gain trademark recognition) over the many years that Anchor has been using it exclusively. Anchor Steam is distributed on a national scale, and has been around for about 30 years. This argument may be weaker however, because it is questionable whether an association between a particular flavor of beer and the word “steam” have become entrenched enough in the public mind to qualify.

In fact, this “secondary meaning” argument could actually be used by City Steam against Anchor Steam. Thomas Walsh of the blog “The Trademark Bar” points out that several names using the word “steam” in association with beer are on file with the USPTO, including “Fullsteam,” “Steamworks,” and “Steam Whistle.”

The issue becomes more complicated in considering the genesis of City Steam's name. In its case, “steam” has nothing to do with the historic Californian brewing method. It is, instead, a reference to the unique heating and cooling system provided to a section of Hartford by the Hartford Steam Company. City Steam is located in the nearby Cheney building, and worked with the steam company to run pipes through its cafe. Its 23-barrel brewery is powered by “city steam.”

The cafe, through ownership group Mountain Shippers, attempted in 2012 to register its own beer trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office under the name “City Steam.” Anchor opposed that effort, and sought a stay on the official determination while it pursues its trademark infringement case.

City Steam, for its part, asserts that Anchor cannot hold all rights to the word “steam” because it is descriptive. Under trademark law, purely descriptive terms are not eligible for trademark registration.

That argument, however, probably applies more accurately to “City Steam” (which does signal some descriptive function) than it does to “Anchor Steam.” By framing the question as one of whether steam describes an aspect of the beer, City Steam opens itself to the possibility that its own name is unfit for trademark registration. At the same time, Anchor is likely to point out that, for itself, “steam” is an historical reference, not at all descriptive of its modern fermenting practices.

Some legal experts think City Steam will likely lose. Candace Moon, a California attorney not connected to the case but who has experience representing beer makers, predicted in an interview with the Hartford Business Journal that City Steam would probably have to change the name on its bottled products – though perhaps not on its cafe.

Whatever the outcome, one of the parties in the case is bound to come away steaming.