Dogfish takes on Hogfish in brand brouhaha

Dogfish Head says it is defending its brand, but that’s not the way a brewer in the Florida Keys sees it.

Craig McBay has operated Florida Keys Brewing Company with his wife, Cheryl, since 2015. In August, the tiny brewery was beginning to can its first beers, which included its popular Hogfish Amber. That same month, McBay said, he received an email from Dogfish Head founder and CEO Sam Calagione.

“I was excited at first,” McBay said, thinking Calagione had tried Hogfish Amber and liked it. “Two sentences in, I realized that was not the case.”

Dogfish objected to the name Hogfish as being too close to the brewery’s name. While they sound similar, a dogfish is a type of shark, while a hogfish is a type of wrasse, popular as food in the Florida Keys and South Florida. McBay said hogfish is so popular in the Keys there are bars named after them and restaurants that base their menus around them.

McBay said Dogfish may have gotten wind of the beer name when Florida Keys Brewing tried to trademark it. After going back and forth with no resolution, McBay said Calagione told him unless the problem was resolved, lawyers would get involved.

McBay said he disagreed that the names were similar, but he lacked the resources to fight a court battle against the Delaware brewery, so he changed the name of the beer to Spearfish Amber. He said changing the name still stings, but he did not want to lose momentum and wanted the beer available for sale. McBay said Dogfish was accommodating in giving him time to phase in the new name. He also sent out a press release explaining the name change.

From there, the story was picked up by FLKeysnews.com, a website for The Reporter and the Keynoter newspapers, and went viral, with many comments critical of Dogfish Head for going after a smaller brewer.

Calagione said his only comment on the situation was an emailed statement to the Cape Gazette.

"This is my least favorite part of our work here at Dogfish Head.  Unfortunately, our company needs to protect our intellectual property just as intentionally and methodically with smaller breweries as we do with breweries that are hundreds of times bigger than Dogfish Head.  And there are many breweries that are hundreds of times our size,”  he said.

“We always try to resolve these issues brewer-to-brewer first and we always try to be respectful to the companies we have to engage with on these issues.  Frustrations are understandable on all sides and that is the subjective part of all of this.  We work hard to stick to the objective points when it comes to defending our brand and the intellectual property my coworkers and I have staked our livelihoods on since 1995 when we were the smallest commercial brewery in America.”

For McBay, he’s moved on, even if he still thinks his company was not in error.

“I was disappointed, but I understand that it’s business. We just have to roll with it. It was frustrating at first, but we’ve come to grips with it,” he said.