Each year more and more craft breweries are being taken to court by companies not amused at the playful pun a brewery made with their name or products.

At the end of the day, these companies, rock stars, etc, usually have a lot deeper pockets and will win their day in court, leaving you poor and close to bankruptcy.

Indeed, as a beer brewery publisher, we have asked many breweries in the UK how did they receive permission to incorporate someone else’s name in their brand and almost always the answer has been the same: “What? I didn’t know you needed permission, we’re just having a bit of fun.”

With so many breweries, and evolving intellectual property laws, many companies struggle to create innovative labels and styles without crossing legal lines. But as the craft beer world gets bigger, so can repercussions for these illegal flirtations, writes VinePair. Law professionals argue such behaviors could potentially damage a brewery’s brand, as well as its bottom line.

“The primary risk is financial,” Brendan M. Palfreyman, intellectual property and craft beer attorney at Harris Beach in Syracuse, N.Y., tells VinePair. Intellectual property, Palfreyman explains, is “an overarching term that covers various intangible types of property … [including] trademark and copyright. Copyright is meant to protect works of art that are fixed in some sort of tangible form, [while] trademark is a source identifier that tells you where particular goods are coming from,” he says. In the craft brewing industry, copyright and trademark allow brewers to “distinguish [their] goods from someone else’s.”

For VinePair’s complete story, go here.