Red Bull Loses Trademark Fight in Europe

Red Bull got up its energy enough to get into a legal fight with 214-year-old Dutch company Frisdranken Industrie Winters B.V. over its trademark recently, but the Austrian beverage maker ended up on the losing end of the stick this time around.

Bloomberg reports that Red Bull took the battle all the way to the European Union’s highest court before finally losing to Frisdranken, which had earned Red Bull’s ire by “filled up cans bearing logos and texts such as ‘Bullfighter’ and ‘Red Horn’ with drinks for another company, called Smart Drinks.”

The court wasn’t buying Red Bull’s argument: “A service consisting of the mere filling of cans bearing a sign protected as a trademark is not use of that sign which is liable to be prohibited,” the EU Court of Justice declared, according to Bloomberg. “The service provided by Winters consists of the filling of cans and this service does not have any similarity with the product for which Red Bull’s trademarks were registered.”

Meanwhile, Red Bull “stunned” the Formula One racing world by tossing all of its team’s drivers and replacing them, according to a press release on motorsport.com. And while Red Bull is clearly sinking some cash into that auto adventure, it has now finally exited the NASCAR world. According to Yahoo! Sports, the company’s decision to leave the sport has about 150 people, who worked with drivers Kasey Kahne and Brian Vickers, looking for work.