Stone Brewing had objected to MillerCoors’ use of “Stones” on packaging and advertising for Keystone beer. The court rejected all of Stone Brewing’s citations to tweets and social media posts and found Stone Brewing hadn’t offered evidence of “actual confusion,” which means someone mistakenly purchased a product, not that they were general confused.
Stone Brewing had offered no evidence that MillerCoors acted with bad intent. The Court specifically held that MillerCoors’ awareness of Stone Brewing was not sufficient to show MillerCoors intentionally adopted Stone Brewing’s Stone mark
Stone Brewing was not able to show it suffered any irreparable harm as a result of the alleged infringement.
“We are pleased with the judge’s ruling to deny Stone Brewing’s motion. Clearly the court saw this as we did, which is that the motion lacked merit. We maintain we always used our Keystone trademark in an appropriate manner, and have easily refuted claims to the contrary,” MillerCoors said.