My brother owns (our last name.com). Our great great grandfather started and ran a fairly successful (pre-prohibition) brewery. Someone found out about our last name, trademarked it, and "restarted" the brewery with no relation to anyone in our family. The best part is they feigned ignorance when they "learned" that there were still living descendants in the area...
Good question. We've talked to various lawyers throughout the years. The crappy part is that the people who resurrected it have hundreds of millions in real estate backed ventures (big $$$), so there's really not much we can do aside from pound sand considering we weren't brewing the beer, or enforcing the trademark. The even weirder thing is that they used his name as their contact email for the longest time on their website, made a brew dedicated to my late grandfather (a pediatrician they never met) based on tongue-depresser airplanes he made for his patients, and even had the gall to leave one of their first bottled brews at my great great grandfather's gravesite.
So the only thing I can do is just raise awareness, and tell people who ask me if there is any relation (when they see/hear my last name) to not support them!
> even had the gall to leave one of their first bottled brews at my great great grandfather's gravesite.
That's a weird thing to do. I can see wanting to steal an established brand because people are attracted to legacy, especially in the case of something like brewing.
But leaving a tribute at his grave is, honestly, just bizarre behavior. Are the obsessed or something? Do they think they have some connection to your family?
One of your family should try to work for them, maybe the company will treat them like the second coming. Or human sacrifice. But hey, worth a shot, right?
Yeah, a bit obsessed, I reckon. What irks me the most is my late father collected breweriana from the old brewery (serving trays, tip trays, signs, etc.). From what I've heard, after inheriting some of his collection and attending the bottle/breweriana shows he went to, I found out from a couple of dealers, that one of the guys from the brewery has also been collecting. So now I've got competition with deep pockets in an otherwise esoteric hobby.
Weird folks out there. I’m named for my grandfather, a former MLB player with a World Series win to his name. While back found out there was a man impersonating him after his death, not too far from where we lived at the time.
What a story! Thanks for sharing. I love the bit in there about the lawyer buying the imposter the replica ring. It was written in a pretty unique way. My great great grandfather actually also owned a baseball team named after his signature beer. Random-fact: Abraham Lincoln's granddaughter's husband played for them.
Oh boy, so the story about the ring is it’s own interesting tidbit - my whole life I was told my aunt stole the ring and “traded it for a bag of pot.” Now, my grandfather only had two children so for it to be the exact same story but with my father as the perpetrator makes for an even stranger twist in this whole story.
How did this man have such a similar story? My father lived and worked in the general area of the conman, did their paths cross at a bar? Both my aunt and father were and are substance abusing screw-ups for most of their lives so it could truly go either way!
Unfortunately, I cut ties with my father before leaving for college and so will likely never know. I accidentally found this newspaper article a few years ago while Googling around, wondering if the stolen original ever turned up for auction or something and your comment about searching for merchandise reminded me. I’ve thought about writing to the imposter and or the article’s author but I feel that would sound like a scam unto itself.
According to the proprietor, he claimed that when he went back X days later, the bottle was gone. He took this as a sign that "he liked it". This is a quote from a newspaper.
If every generation since your great great grandfather had 3 children, then you can expect your great great grandfather to have 81 descendants in your generation (most of whom would have a different surname - to a first approximation you only retain the surname if your connection to him is on the father's side at every level).
I'm guessing you wouldn't know all of them, and in the olden days people had more kids so it could easily be a lot higher than that. Isn't it possible that the people running the brewery are also great great grandchildren of your great great grandfather?
Some light googling led me to the brewery in question. On their About page, it would appear the answer is a no. They didn't know who the GG grandfather was until they randomly saw his name on a building, and then decided to name a beer after him.
Say I feel a lot of respect to e.g. Amelia Earhart, so much so that I want to establish an air-exploration company and name it Earhart Air Explorers. Do I need to get an approval from all of her descendants first?
