Would you confuse Staropramen and Staroraven?

Ladislav Vrtiš, the managing director and co-owner of the Raven brewery, ended his response to Staropramen’s pre-suit challenge with the brewery’s greeting “Godspeed”. With a certain amount of irony, he responds to Staropramen’s criticism of the possible confusion between “Staropramen” and “Staroraven” beers. The brewery informed about the legal dispute on its social media, where it also published the full text of its response.

According to Vrtis, the whole matter is rather absurd, because no one has ever compared their craft beer with Staropramen and he does not personally know of a place where the two beers are offered at the same time. As far as the name is concerned, the word raven is pronounced [ˈreɪvən] and, if pronounced correctly, no one would confuse Staropramen and Staroreivn.

According to him, even the visual aspect cannot lead to confusion. “In the case of the incriminated beer, moreover, we really tried to make the kitschy label look unlike anyone else and deliberately used a really ugly blue colour. It’s sold in sevens per kilo, off the chain, and it clearly states the manufacturer and big bird everywhere so no one gets confused. Really!” he said in his response.

Despite the perceived pointlessness of the whole dispute, Raven Brewery offered Staropramen a helpful gesture by renaming their remaining stock of beer to Novoraven. They then invited their customers to stick on the new label, which they provided with a graphic manual.

They sent the Staropramen brewery and their law firm a case of the incriminated beer together with an invitation to ‘sit in the garden and taste each other’s samples’, which they considered a better option than sitting in the dock.