A small Wellington gin company is fighting the mother of all battles in a trademark dispute with US-based firm, Energy Beverages LLC, which makes Mother energy drinks.
The dispute centres on the name of the gin company Mothers Ruined, which Energy Beverages claims breaches its trademark rights over the word mother.
Mothers Ruined co-owners Jo Davy and Helen Gower lodged the application for the name in January 2022, but were shocked when months later the Intellectual Property Office notified them of the objection.
"Our first thought was this is going to be expensive, and we were intimidated,” Davy said.
“We were new to business and new to trademarking and intellectual property matters. We thought we should back off and change the name.”
But, with the help of a lawyer taking the case pro bono, the pair decided to fight it.
“It feels fundamental to us that the word mother should not be contestable in a legal sense,” Davy said.
“We know the company has contested other companies as well with a similar name, so we want to stand up and say 'no, it's not fair',” Gower said.
The pair are now waiting for a hearing at the Intellectual Property Office tribunal, expected to take place later this year. Following that decision, either party will then have the right to appeal to the High Court.
Intellectual property lawyer Kate Duckworth, who is representing Davy and Gower, said she was confident the case would go their way.
"One of the elements for a trademark case to be successful is there has to be deception and confusion," Duckworth said.
"I don't believe Mothers Ruined is a threat to the energy drink business, as they are not competing products."
Duckworth said the energy drink market, valued at more than $141 billion as of 2021, was very litigious given its deep pockets.
"There is a strategy a lot of trademark and brand owners take, which is about the purity of the trademark register," she said.
"That is that once you let a trademark in, there will be another, and once you start letting others in it's harder to keep all the others out, so there is a method to what seems like madness."
A lawyer representing Energy Beverages LLC, a subsidiary of Monster Beverages Corporation, said the company would not be providing any comment regarding the case.
As mothers themselves born in the United Kingdom, Davy and Gower said they felt particularly attached to the name, derived from the moral panic over women drinking gin in 18th century England.
"We are resolute we are going to see this through and hopefully prevail," Davy said.
"As a tiny company taking on an enormous American company, we are proud of ourselves, and we are not giving up."
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