All bocked up

Dead lawyers. No, not really... but it made you smile. The ones in this story are unfortunately quite alive:

A small brewery in upstate New York has incurred the wrath of the Star Wars franchise by naming one of its signature lagers, "Strikes Bock." Lucasfilm has filed a "notice of opposition" against Empire Brewery, when it recently tried to trademark the beer.

"We named it 'Strikes Bock' because we thought it was a clever pun," Monica Palmer, Empire's director of marketing told CNN. "We weren't trying to infringe on anything. We were just trying to make a nice beer with a funny name."

Not so, says Lucasfilm, which notes in its filing:

----Applicant's EMPIRE STRIKES BOCK mark is virtually identical in sound, appearance, and connotation to Lucasfilm's THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK mark, differing by only one letter in the respective last words "BOCK" and "BACK," and the initial word "THE."

There were two ways to handle this situation. You probably saw it as soon as I did. One is to offer a licensing deal, use the advertising muscle of the Star Wars franchise to help this small brewery sell a Star Destroyer full of beer, reap the rewards of the royalties to add a bit more cash to the coffers, and generate good will among fans and drunks alike, (not to mention drunken fans such as myself).

The other option is to be a bunch of humorless, legalistic douchenozzles.

Great job, Lucasfilm. Really awesome. What's next? Maybe you'd like to punt some babies down Madison Avenue.

Remember, 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean is a damned good start.