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June 26, 2018 The news that the Nashville-based brewery TailGate Beer filed Trademark Infringement against Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing Co. has put a spotlight on how ugly Europe’s control over American beer markets is getting in recent days. I am new to the beer industry, but this isn’t my first rodeo where everything is stacked in favor of big foreign corporate entities. However, this is the first time the Federal Trade Commission has asked me for my input in a complaint. I do Information Technology consulting and I get excited by delivering the ultimate product value to a consumer or retailer. Because of this, I agreed to work with Kansas City Brewing Company to start producing on a large scale the three brands that have revived what used to be Kansas City’s largest brewer and largest industrial employer before prohibition. The creator of these three beers was inspired by his 18th Street Armory platoon sergeant, an accomplished Kansas City, Kansas home brewer who in the 1990s would occasionally invite some of the Guardsmen over to his home in the Argentine on Sunday evenings after drill to taste some old school session brews. Not fruit flavored crafts with ever more infusions of Cascade Hops, but the old recipe beers and ales the families that settled here brought with them and made again in the Midwest where the best matched mineral levels of water flowed out of the tap and the grains used by the world shipped to market through the city’s great rail systems. This experience gave him a new found appreciation for what those beers became, the simple lagers of the American plains, light clear and with just the right bite. The beers our parents and grandparents grew up enjoying. They take more time and planning than craft ales. An ale can come close in looks, but after working in the yard or while enjoying an evening bowling or at a club listening to a band; there is no substitute for a lager’s refreshing crispness. The first of these three non-craft lager beers, KC LiteTM with its original light sky blue can sitting in stacks on the floor at room temperature outsold Budweiser and Miller in the cooler at some stores. Missouri’s licensed distributors who had refused to distribute it and had kept it from the market for over three years to protect their InBev master (the company which owns Budweiser, Bush, Miller, and Coors and most of the big nationwide craft breweries) were still shocked. You can see their reaction and how it rocked InBev in the age of sophisticated Information Technology driven supply chains. Bud Light and Bush suddenly came out in light blue cans. Locally, Weston Brewery adopted light blue for one of its distinctly craft ales distributed by the National Baseball League Kansas City Royals at its opening game. Not the beautiful traditional dark Royal Blue of the MLB KC Royals baseball team, but the same light sky blue popularized by the KC LiteTM can. During the following season after winning the World Series, the Royals even switched to special team jerseys with the big shiny gold “KC” like Kansas City Brewing Company’s Missouri registered KC LiteTM trademark. Boulevard Brewing Co. switched four of its brands to also feature a center triangular field with the same light sky blue popularized by the KC LiteTM trademarked can. Boulevard Brewing Co. is not owned by InBev, the giant Belgian monopoly corporation. But, don’t look too closely at overlapping shareholders InBev has in common with Boulevard’s Belgian parent corporation, Duvel Moortgat Brewery. I know nobody involved with Kansas City Brewing Company minds if Boulevard Brewing Co. like Weston has come to believe that the new “in” color for beer packaging is KC LiteTM light sky blue. Certainly adopting a color is not infringement. It is not even a trade dress violation where a product is being packaged in a way to create confusion among customers. However, admittedly this is more because of our different product and customer cultures than Intellectual Property case law examples. We appreciate that the craft beer movement was largely a revolt by artisan brewers and their drinkers against light beers and Kansas City Brewing Company set out to make a better tasting light beer. Craft brewers like to avoid our mild consistent traditional taste and we like it when our beer doesn’t have the grapefruit juice of craft style Cascade Hops ale. But, under European ownership, Boulevard Brewing Co. isn’t playing nice. The first experience was a mysterious phone call. Since Kansas City Brewing Company is a hundred year old corporation revived under a unique aspect of Missouri law, the phone inquiry was about all the brands Kansas City Brewing Company owned at the onset of prohibition when it became a conglomerate of many of the different area breweries. A friendly conversation and mere layperson speculation took place, but shortly after the conversation, Boulevard Brewing Co. pulled its Muehlebach Lager inspired Pilsner and renamed the beer “KC Pils” with a label and can that looked an awful lot like KC LagerTM . Boulevard Brewing Co. even went further and boxed the cans in unregistered trade dress that had the same color and look of KC LagerTM to overcome the Missouri Secretary of State’s objections that would arise from making the KC Pils label and can trademarks like the box where Boulevard Brewing Co.’s customer confusion would be obvious. These are just minor attacks by the Belgian owned Boulevard Brewing Co. and wouldn’t be worth mentioning if it weren’t for the fact that Boulevard Brewing Co. beers get distributed by InBev distributors. Boulevard Brewing Co. ‘s beers aren’t hidden in back stock rooms by InBev distributors, and stores aren’t deprived of “loyalty bonuses or kickbacks” and other rebates by InBev distributors when they display Boulevard Brewing Co.‘s beers. Even Billy Bush’s beer company, funded after the sale of Anheuser-Busch to InBev had to ask how Kansas City Brewing Company was able to get KC LiteTM out into Missouri stores in competition with the macro beers. InBev throttles its competition through market allocation. If you want an InBev distributor to carry your craft beer at $9.00 a six pack, your company will be allowed to live. If you want to compete on price with Bud or Miller, every institution InBev can control or influence will be turned against you. In order to compete against St. Louis and the rest of InBev, Kansas City Brewing Company secured an investor with a large unused Carnation Milk production plant in the Blue Valley Industrial park near Hwy 435 and Truman road. In negotiating for the property, Kansas City Brewing Company was assured by the City of Kansas City Economic Development Corporation (EDCKC) representative that incentives like tax abatements, employee hiring and training assistance would be available if Kansas City Brewing Company created a beverage manufacturing complex in the unused plant with the potential to create 200 jobs. Not surprisingly, the EDCKC representative no longer is employed their where the CEO of Boulevard Brewing Co. is a director of the Kansas City Economic Development Corporation. When two of our city’s largest and most established banks looked over the proposed beverage complex numbers, the creditworthiness of Kansas City Brewing Company and its CEO, along with the substantial additional security of area real estate offered as security, there was a lot of excitement and enthusiasm over the applications, but then suddenly the two established local financial institutions could not even comply with federal law requiring notification of acceptance or rejection of the funding. One institution certainly has too much at stake in Boulevard Brewing Co. Most recently, I had occasion to comment in a forum where a new Boulevard Brewing Co. beer has a label that looks very close to KC MaltTM. I even said, “There they go again copying labels”. I didn’t even know about TailGate Beer. I have no Law based knowledge of whether it is infringement or the intentional creation of trade dress confusion. I am more concerned about European corporate attitudes toward business in American markets, and the Antitrust implications. European financial conglomerates, industry groups, and reciprocal relationships are often hard to spot and market allocation practices that might be business as normal in Belgium are per se Sherman Act violations here. It troubles me that Boulevard Brewing Co. is playing with labels and markets this way. But at least its not hospital supplies like my former company Medical Supply Chain experienced with General Electric (GE). Mostly, I just feel like Boulevard was a much better company when it was Kansas City owned. And, I know this city is a great place to build a beer company, which is why Kansas City Breweries Company is offering, shared ownership with KC residence and institutions. Spread the Word and Invest! Samuel Lipari - Independent Consultant Kansas City Breweries Company 1609 N. Crystal Avenue Kansas City Missouri 64126 Ph/Txt: 816-507-1328 [email protected] www.KansasCityBreweriesCompany.com .

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