“Cris” loses to vodka pressure

News updated here: Cristal made its way back to Russia

Going into the Russian wine market is also about studying the brands registration situation. You should be especially careful if your brand name is similar to a brand name of Russian… vodka. The recent illustration for this fact is the case of Cristal, the cuvee prestige of Louis Roederer and the vodka brand Kristal, belonging to SPI group – which is the Russian government controlled producer of most selling vodkas in Russia and the world.

Last week the Moscow arbitrage court made what seems the final point in the dispute regarding the legitimacy of the Cristal brand on the Russian territory. The court found Cristal and Kristal brands similar,  overlapping and possibly confusing for the Russian consumers. The Russian court actually believes that you can mix up the top cuvee of Champagne and the vodka brand. SPI believes that vodka and champagne are the goods of the same category (read, alcoholic beverages). This was the main debate point, Louis Roederer lawyers have been trying to convince the court that those two categories cannot be called the same and are completely different and that SPI is not planning to produce any Champagne of the same name.

The only chance left for Cristal to be officially back on the market is to pay royalties to vodka producers which means that either the price of Cristal will go up significantly (I am not sure how much these royalties will be) or Louis Roederer will take a fundamental decision to continue the “Battle Royale” in courts which doesn’t seem to be too promising after the last court ruling.