ABERDEENSHIRE craft beer makers, Brewdog, have blamed their “trigger-happy lawyers” for a legal row with a small family run pub in Birmingham.
The “punk” brewer’s legal team sent threatening letters to brother and sister Joshua and Sallie McFadyen after the pair unveiled plans to open the Lone Wolf pub in Birmingham.
The Midlands pub, the beer makers’ brief said, infringed on the name of Lone Wolf vodka which Brewdog launched last December.
The McFadyens said they had been using the name since 2015, but couldn’t risk the cost of going to court, and changed the pub’s name to Wolf.
Sallie McFadyen told the Guardian: “All our money has gone into refurbishing this place and getting it open and we don’t have the same money as they have.” Yesterday, after much criticism from the craft beer community, Brewdog founder, James Watt, backed down, tweeting: “Our lawyers got a bit trigger happy. We are happy for the Lone Wolf Bar in Birmingham to keep using the name.” he tweeted.
And then added: “And we will send them a few free cases of our upcoming Lone Wolf Gin and Lone Wolf Vodka to boot.”
Walsall-based microbrewery Backyard Brewhouse, which labelled the Scottish company “just another multinational corporate machine”.
Joshua and Sallie McFadyen, who run the Wolf, welcomed the gesture but used their own Twitter account to indicate they weren’t entirely satisfied with Watt offering his permission to let them use the name: The Wolf Birmingham (@TheWolfBham) Shame we had to spend money rebranding because of ‘lawyers’ #independent #CraftBeer
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