A Lanham Act false advertising claim will fail without evidence that consumers were actually misled.
That is the key takeaway from Victory Global, LLC v. Fresh Bourbon, LLC, where the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed summary judgment after finding no unambiguously false statements and no proof of consumer deception.
The ruling underscores a practical point for businesses: unless a claim is clearly false, liability will turn on whether there is evidence that consumers were misled.
The case arose from competing marketing claims between two African American-owned bourbon companies in Kentucky.
Victory Global, which does business as Brough Brothers Distillery, was formed in 2013. It began selling bourbon in 2020, initially sourcing product from Indiana, while developing its own Louisville distillery, which became operational later that year.
Fresh Bourbon, founded in 2017, took a different approach. Before opening its own Lexington distillery in 2022, its founders participated in distilling bourbon at another Kentucky facility beginning in 2018.
Fresh Bourbon first sold that Kentucky-produced bourbon in 2020 through that arrangement.
The dispute centred on how Fresh Bourbon described itself in marketing and public materials.
These included statements suggesting it was the first African American-owned distillery in Kentucky, the first to distill or produce bourbon, or the first to do so with an African American master distiller.
Victory...
A Lanham Act false advertising claim will fail without evidence that consumers were actually misled. That is the key takeaway from Victory Global, LLC v. Fresh Bourbon, LLC, where the U.S. Court o...