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Monk Estate Suit Against Beer Co. Moves Forward
A Northern California craft brewery lost an early attempt to knock out a lawsuit brought by the son of jazz legend Thelonious Monk, who claims the brewery uses Monk's name and likeness without permission.
For more than a decade, North Coast Brewing Co. has been brewing “Brother Thelonious” beer, named after the pianist and composer whose songs are the second-most recorded in the jazz catalog, behind only Duke Ellington. The packaging for the Belgian-style abbey ale features a portrait of Monk stylized to make him look like a sort of patron saint of suds.
According to both sides in the litigation, the brewery initially had an oral agreement with Monk's estate to use his name in exchange for donating a portion of the beer's profits to the nonprofit Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz.
Lawyers for Thelonious Monk Jr., however, claim that North Coast also used Monk's likeness on merchandise, something they claim wasn't part of the oral agreement, and that the estate revoked the brewery's rights to use the Monk name at all in January 2016.
Monk Jr. sued North Coast on behalf of the estate of his father in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in August 2017 claiming the brewery's continued use of the name and image constituted trademark infringement, and a violation of the estate's right of publicity. Monk Jr. v. North Coast Brewing Co., 3:2017cv05015.
North Coast's lawyers at McDermott Will & Emery asked Northern District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr. to dismiss the suit late last year noting that it came after Monk Jr. had a disagreement with the Monk Institute and was removed as its chairman. Monk Jr., they argued, was seeking to “secure a personal income stream from North Coast's decade-long charitable largesse to the nonprofit Monk Institute” and that he didn't have a viable claim.
But in a recent decision, District Judge Gilliam found that disputes remain over the nature of North Coast's initial oral agreement and that the “fact-intensive” issues at play in the case need to be fleshed out before the case can be decided.
McDermott's Robert Zelnick passed along the following statement from North Coast: “While we are disappointed that the court did not dismiss the Monk Estate's claims out of hand, we are eager to proceed to litigation to reveal the facts underlying these meritless claims.”
Monk Jr.'s lawyer, Joel Rothman in the Boca Raton, FL, office of Schneider Rothman Intellectual Property Law Group, said there never was a written agreement concerning North Coast's right to continue to use the Monk name, image and likeness. “We attempted to work it out with North Coast and they refused,” Rothman said. “Jazz and beer go together, but only if both sides agree.”
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Ross Todd is bureau chief for The Recorder, a San Francisco-based ALM sibling of Entertainment Law & Finance.
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