Lewis And Wilkins LLP Partner Steve Koers was a presenter at today’s continuing legal education seminar hosted by the Indiana Barrister Network and sponsored by LexisNexis. Steve serves as Sun King Brewery’s general counsel, a leading craft brewery in Indiana and headquartered in downtown Indianapolis. Before an audience of attorneys, Steve discussed the intellectual property issues facing craft brewers both locally and nationally. Nationally, the craft beer industry doubled sales between 2007 and 2012. Various experts forecast that the craft beer industry will triple its 2007 sales to $18 billion by the end of 2017. The explosive growth in the industry has created new legal issues for brewers regarding their trademarks, patents, and online presence – in addition to conforming with ever changing alcohol laws.
In the April 19, 2017, edition of the Indiana Lawyer newspaper, Steve was asked about his approach when breweries have conflict over infringement of their product’s names. He said not to run to the courthouse at the first hint of intellectual property conflict. “You try and be nice about it by calling people in the other business if there are issues and you see if you can work it out,” Steve said.
Steve Koers’ primary practice areas include business and alcohol law, worker’s compensation defense and insurance defense. He can be reached at (317) 495-7100.