The preliminary ruling in Case C-478/07 Budejovický Budvar, národní podnik v Rudolf Ammersin GmbH, the second reference to the European Court of Justice in the battle to sell 'Bud' beer in Austria, was published yesterday. A note on the legal details of this long and complicated ruling can be found here.

Stephanie Bodoni (Bloomberg) reports that the consequence of this ruling is that Czech brewer Budejovicky Budvar may lose control over the Bud name on beer in Austria, thus freeing the defendant (part of Anheuser-Busch InBev NV) to sell its product there. An interim injunction has prevented imports and sales of the American produce for the past decade.

Budvar says it owns the rights to Bud because its beer comes from Ceske Budejovice, or Budweis in German, that Bud has been a national geographical indication since 1975 in the former Czechoslavakia and that this protection was extended by a bilateral agreement to Austria in 1976. Budvar may be able to keep the rights to the name only if (i) Bud is deemed to be a simple geographical indication, referring only to a region, and (ii) if a survey shows that Czech consumers associate the name with beer from a specific region.