EUROPEAN COURT – IN SOME CASES COMPARATIVE ADVERTISING IS ACCEPTED. BEER LIKENED TO CHAMPAGNE

A small Belgian beer producer has won a case against the French champagne colossal Veuve Clicquot at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg: it has been allowed to use the terms ‘brut’ and ‘reserve’ to indicate a beer created using ‘champagne’ methods.

When the Belgian company De Landtsheer launched a beer named Malheuer in 2001 that was fermented using the “Champenois” method, not only did one of the most noted names in champagne, Veuve Clicquot, take note, but even the Champagne Committee, Comite Interprofessionnel du Vin de Champagne, went up before the French court in Nivelles demanding that the use of certain terms in reference to the beer be banned.

According the French producers (for whom the national courts would judge in favor of) the beer company had violated comparative advertising rules by using terms that were deceptive for consumers. In 2002, in fact, De Landtsheer was forced to discontinue using terms like ‘methode traditionnelle' , ‘champagne’, and, above all, any reference to the winemakers of Reims and the production methods of their product.

Though the Belgian company put an end to the use of ‘Champagnebier’, it did make an appeal to continue to use the terms ‘brut’, ‘reserve’ and ‘brut reserve’. The European Court of Justice in Brussels that examined the case took into consideration the EU laws of 1984 on comparative advertising, and the concluding decision was that comparative advertising among products without indications of origin is acceptable in certain cases.