Anheuser-Busch Hopes to Soon Tell Europe ‘This Bud’s for You’

FRANKFURT —  Anheuser-Busch Cos. of the United States hopes it can soon solve a trademark problem with brewers in Czechoslovakia that stops it from selling its Budweiser beer in much of Europe, board member and Vice President Jerry Ritter said Monday.

“We do have a trademark issue with the Czechoslovaks with regard of the use of the name Budweiser,” Ritter said. The problem has arisen because a Czechoslovakian beer has that name.

“We hope ultimately we will be able to use the name . . . in most of the European continent,” he said.

The trademark issue now blocks sales of Budweiser in France, West Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Spain.

But the name Budweiser is likely to be banned by West German laws designating geographic origins, Ritter said.

The recent lifting of West Germany’s 472-year-old purity law has ostensibly opened the German beer market, the world’s second largest, to foreigners, but it is likely to be hard to break into.

“Although Germany is the second-largest beer market, it is not the easiest to enter. We will examine it closely but there are other markets which are easier,” Ritter said.

The company did sell a beer in West Germany called Anheuser-Busch in the early 1980s, but it was quickly withdrawn because as too expensive to brew, Ritter said.

Anheuser-Busch announced in April that it plans to purchase the German firm Hopfengut Huell, a small hops grower in Bavaria. But the purchase was aimed only at increasing the company’s agricultural expertise and not directly linked to its brewing interests, Ritter said.

Anheuser-Busch brews and sells Budweiser in Japan, Israel, Ireland, Denmark and South Korea and recently began exporting it to Spain, he said.