who's ready to get duff-ed?

plus: trademarks are weird ONE CRACKED FACT | [View in Browser]( [logo]( [Germany Got Away With Making Duff Beer, Unauthorized]( By: [RM Avatar] [Ryan Menezes]( • January 25, 2022 [01252022](www.cracked.com/article_32446_germany-got-away-with-making-duff-beer-unauthorized.html?newsletter-cat=movies-tv?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=25012022) It's Simpsons week at Cracked. We'll have more cromulent facts for you every day. And if you want to dive deeper in 90’s nostalgia, [enter to win]( an advanced copy of The Nineties: A Book by Chuck Klosterman. With their ultra-recognizable Duff beer brand, The Simpsons has long had a huge merchandising opportunity—an opportunity they mostly declined to exploit. True, for a while, you could buy themed "Duff" beer at Universal Studios park (and maybe you'll be able to do the same at Disney World sometime), but they didn't go all the way and produced a tie-in beer for retail. Matt Groening said that would be irresponsible, since The Simpsons has always been so popular with children. So, with the show leaving that money on the table, what would happen if you stepped in and tried selling Duff beer yourself? Many different people have tried, with varying results. If you tried it in the US, you can expect lawyers to shut you down quickly. In Mexico, however, someone started selling Duff beer in 2006, got a local trademark, and expanded without any problems. In New Zealand, a brewery started making Duff beer in 1992, and this had nothing to do with the show—the owner was simply named Gavin Duff. Fox came down on him and got him to change the name of his product to McDuffs. The strangest case came out of Germany. A company called Duff Beer UG made Duff beer, using the exact logo used in The Simpsons. In our non-expert legal opinion, this was trademark violation, a way to capitalize on the Simpsons brand. But when Fox sued, a court sided with Duff Beer UG. Fox had never trademarked "Duff" for beverages specifically, so they had no right to claim ownership of the brand. They had no competing actual Duff beer of their own, so they were losing no business even if buyers mistook the German beer for a Simpsons tie-in. Duff Beer UG celebrated ... and soon had to file a lawsuit, unsuccessfully, against a second German company that was also now selling Duff beer. In the end, Fox appealed and won the right to the trademark, because they did start selling their own tie-in beer, but for a while, Duff Beer UG sold their product widely, even internationally. This caused some problems in France, which has strict product placement laws and now viewed episodes of The Simpsons as ads for the German beer. The solution? France blurred the Duff logo in the episodes they aired. Even episodes that were saying Duff beer is disgusting or that Duff bottles contain human heads. For more trademark woes, check out: - [You Can Patent a Living Species]( - [Monster Cable Claims to Have Invented Monsters]( - [Marvel Created a Superhero Just So They'd Own the Name]( [Daily Digest]( [13 Eyebrow-Raising Bits Of Trivia To Surprise And Delight]( [By Andrea Meno / January 25th, 2022]( [Before There Was Tiktok, There Was The Weird World of Vine]( [By JD Roberson / January 25th, 2022]( [Peloton Makes Headlines Again For All The Wrong Reasons on 'Billions']( [By Carly Tennes / January 24th, 2022]( [How 200,000 Beavers Took Over Part Of Argentina]( [By Ethan Tyrrell / January 24th, 2022]( [Did 'The Simpsons Movie' Predict Tom Hanks's Commemorative Video?]( [By Carly Tennes / January 24th, 2022]( [READ MORE]( [fb]( [tw]( [yt]( [flipboard]( [insta png]( [tiktok png]( [ARTICLES]( | [PICTOFACTS]( | [Videos]( Literally media Ltd. 190 West St, Suite 17B, Brooklyn NY 11222 COPYRIGHT © 2005-2021 Cracked is published by Literally media Ltd. [Unsubscribe](