Molson Slapped in Domain Hijacking Attempt

Lew Pitcher writes "Well, it took a Canadian court to find that a Canadian citizen can own the domain name canadian.biz without being a beer (or a beer company). The Toronto Star is reporting that the Ontario Superiour Court has overruled ICANN's decision to take domain canadian.biz from its current owner and give it to Molson's Breweries (makers of "Canadian" brand beer). A spokesperson for Molsons gave the obligatory statement about disappointment in the decision, and indicated that it was too early to determine if Molsons would appeal the decision. Score one against the bad guys."

Comments

increasing irrelevance of bad beer

[epine]

Thankfully, most of Canada has a thriving microbrew industry these days that makes the national brands taste like sour corn syrup by comparison. The occassional batch stands against the best German or British exports, though not with great consistency.

One strange thing is that the Guiness generally gets better the closer you get to Ireland. Once in a blue moon the Guiness on the west coast has a head you can properly sculpt. The Guiness in Halifax is generally reliable, and if you pick the right place, the Guiness in Montreal can often be excellent.

Quebec is an interesting place beer wise. The beer selection tends to be fairly cosmopolitan. If you do chose a Quebec beer, it'll likely grow some hair on your chest. Barly retisa by the jug.

Molsons primarily appeals to the kind of person were lack of surprise is the only requirement. There are so many good good beers and so many good bad beers, I can't understand why anyone would drink Molsons at all, but there's no explaining taste.

I can see how the judge would look askance at Molson's attempt to patent the Maple Leaf. These days Tim Hortons is a much stronger national brand. They probably ran into the same problem that Microsoft faced in the court room: the judge was all too familiar with their product line.

Re:increasing irrelevance of bad beer

[Papineau]

Another thing slows the spread of micros: the taxes per liter of beer. I believe (DISCLAIMER: I DO own 500 Unibroue stock) that the tax is higher for micros than for big breweries, so those can have a lower price because of that tax (I think it's something along 9 cents per liter for the big guys, to something around 28 cents per liter for the micros) in addition to scale economies.

IIRC, the rationale for the tax difference is that it's easier for the government to control the cleanliness, etc. of the big guys, than it is to control the smaller ones. The micros are trying to get that tax uniformised, but of course the big breweries lobby against it.

For Joe Sixpack, the price of his sixpack matters. If the micros' is a buck or two higher, there's a non negligible probability that he'll take the Coors Lite over the Blanche de Chambly, even though the latter won the Gold Medal of the Beverage Testing Institute of Chicago in 1997, 1998 and 1999.