.floatimg-left-hort { float:left; } .floatimg-left-caption-hort { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:300px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatimg-left-vert { float:left; margin-top:10px; margin-right:15px; width:200px;} .floatimg-left-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; font-size: 12px; width:200px;} .floatimg-right-hort { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px;} .floatimg-right-caption-hort { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 300px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimg-right-vert { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px;} .floatimg-right-caption-vert { float:left; margin-right:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; font-size: 12px; } .floatimgright-sidebar { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 200px; border-top-style: double; border-top-color: black; border-bottom-style: double; border-bottom-color: black;} .floatimgright-sidebar p { line-height: 115%; text-indent: 10px; } .floatimgright-sidebar h4 { font-variant:small-caps; } .pullquote { float:right; margin-top:10px; margin-left:10px; margin-bottom:10px; width: 150px; background: url(http://www.dmbusinessdaily.com/DAILY/editorial/extras/closequote.gif) no-repeat bottom right !important ; line-height: 150%; font-size: 125%; border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} .floatvidleft { float:left; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} .floatvidright { float:right; margin-bottom:10px; width:325px; margin-right:10px; clear:left;} When lawyers for the University of Iowa and Iowa State University told Doug Bakker he was abusing the schools’ trademarks and colors for the sake of selling wine, he was willing to make amends, to a point.

So too were the universities, said Keith Bystrom of Iowa State’s legal department.

Those generous thoughts from all parties in the trademark dispute were for naught. Bakker filed a lawsuit March 26 in U.S. District Court in Des Moines demanding that the universities stop pressuring him to change his wine labels and seeking unspecified monetary damages.

Bystrom said the lawsuit came as a surprise, as the parties were in negotiations as late as February to find a compromise.

Bakker is the owner of Madison County Winery LLC near St. Charles, southwest of Greater Des Moines. He bottled two wines last year, a blended red and a blended white, and slapped labels on them to reflect those colors. They were part of a three-wine set, he said, with the third a rose with a pink and black label marketed to promote breast cancer awareness. Pink complemented the color of the wine.

State Red was the red wine. Its label combined cardinal red and gold to reflect the color of the varieties of grapes used in the wine, Bakker said. He followed that same marketing technique with Iowa Gold, the white wine whose label was black and gold, with gold used to reflect the color of the wine.

Using colors in a label that represent the color of a wine is a common marketing technique in the wine industry, Bakker said.

The universities haven’t objected to the color pink used for the rose.

The are concerned about red and gold and black and gold.

Those colors play prominently in the trademarks of Iowa State and the University of Iowa, and both institutions, through their attorneys or licensing companies, cried foul.

Iowa State also objected to the use of the word “State” in the red wine labeling, saying it has long been associated with the university.

The wines hit retail outlets last August.

On Aug. 18, the University of Iowa sent a letter saying it owned all rights, title and interest to the use of the colors gold and black in connection with the words Iowa Gold and demanded that Madison County Winery stop production of the labels.

The winery denied that it was infringing on the university’s trademark rights, but offered to enter into negotiations to come up with an acceptable label.

In September, Iowa State protested the use of red and gold in the State Red label. Again, Madison County Winery denied that it was violating the university’s trademark rights, but offered to discuss a change in the label.

Madison County wines also hit store shelves at roughly the same time that Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. rolled out its “fan cans” of beer, with black and gold cans showing up in Iowa City and red and gold cans in Ames.

Anheuser-Busch stopped producing the cans after the universities protested.

Bystrom said that in other matters of trademark infringement, the universities have the legal right to confiscate items on the spot, such as T-shirts bearing an unauthorized copy of Iowa State’s mascot, Cy, that might be sold outside Jack Trice Stadium.

“We evaluate each case, and frankly, if you use an I-State or our Cy mark, which are registered, it’s pretty certain that you are using it with the intention to benefit from our trademark,” he said. “We didn’t feel like that drastic of a step was necessary.”

Bystrom said the universities didn’t view wine sales as an immediate threat, and those sales certainly would not have infringed on a potential income generator, since neither university markets wine or other alcoholic beverages. However, Iowa State officials, at least, did believe that Bakker was attempting to draw a marketing connection between the university and his wine.

Rather than ordering Bakker to remove his product from store shelves, the universities asked for a label change, Bystrom said.

“We didn’t say ‘remove the offending bottles from the market.'” he said. “We asked him not to produce any more, which we thought was a very reasonable way to address this issue.”

Bakker, who started growing grapes in 2002 and produced wine from them three years later, complied, to a point. Using two contrasting colors, including a color that complemented the wine, was a common marketing technique at Madison County Winery from the time it produced its first wines in 2005, he said.

As with most Iowa wineries, Bakker’s operation barely qualifies as large. He produces about 24,000 bottles of wine a year. He had sold nearly all of the initial 6,000 bottles of the offending wines, State Red and Iowa Gold, by the time he changed the labels to read just Red or Gold. The wines sell for $11.99 a bottle, he said.

On a recent day, he was bottling another batch of what is now called Gold.

After receiving the initial complaints from the universities, Madison County Winery sent a sales policy to its retailers in October that established marketing and sales rules for displaying the wines, including a provision that they should not be sold near products that were licensed by the universities.

The universities were not placated; they told Bakker in November that they would be “acting in concert” to enforce their cease and desist demands, according to the lawsuit.

Bystrom said negotiators for the universities wanted Bakker to reverse the colors on the label, essentially using yellow letters on darker backgrounds, such as red or black.

The universities fired off letters in January and February telling Bakker that he remained at odds with their trademark rights after changing the wine names but not the colors in the labels.

Bakker decided that enough was enough.

“We basically did what they asked,” he said. “They said, ‘No, you can’t even use color.’ It felt like you have an 800-pound gorilla there and no matter what you do you’re going to be in a fight. So I decided to take the offensive. … For me it becomes a matter of how much control do I have over my own business.”