These cases were part of the transformation of trademark from a narrow right against straight up fraud to a much more expansive right that allowed Maker’s Mark to prevail against Jose Cuervo’s red wax seal for its otherwise completely different-looking tequila. Where it’s not advertising/consumer protection law, it’s likely to be trademark law-plenty of producers copied and sued each other (sometimes both).
For example, in 1885 a recipe book offered a variety of recipes that could be passed off as bourbon and rye “rectified” liquor was sold as “bourbon.” The Bottled-in-Bond Act of 1897, which Haara identifies as the nation’s first consumer protection law, didn’t solve the problem, so President Taft formally defined “straight,” “blended,” and “imitation” whiskey in 1909. Americans often have a lot of pride in their productions but there are also plenty of sharp dealers, and bourbon has a lot of both sets of characters.
“Shaped” might be an overstatement, but it’s a decent account of how changes in American business fed and responded to changes in American law.
More than just true bourbon history, this is part of the American story. In Bourbon Justice Brian Haara delves into the legal history behind one of Americas most treasured spirits to uncover a past fraught with lawsuits whose outcome, surprisingly perhaps, helped define a nation.Īpproaching the history of bourbon from a legal standpoint, Haara tells the history of America through the development of commercial laws that guided our nation from an often reckless laissez-faire mentality, through the growing pains of industrialization, and past the overcorrection of Prohibition. Bourbon is responsible for the growth and maturation of many substantive areas of the law, such as trademark, breach of contract, fraud, governmental regulation and taxation, and consumer protection. Tracking the history of bourbon and bourbon law illuminates the development of the United States as a nation, from conquering the wild frontier to rugged individualism to fostering the entrepreneurial spirit to solidifying itself as a nation of laws. Bourbon whiskey has made a surprising contribution to American legal history.
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