(Lexington, KY) – If you are unfamiliar with Reddit at this point, you shouldn’t be. It is one of the largest websites on the internet and perhaps the largest (or one of the top) message board-style sites. Nearly 100,000 people have subscribed to popular updates posted on the beer board.

On Thursday, West Sixth Brewing co-founder, Ben Self, hopped on Reddit and started an Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread regarding the Magic Hat lawsuit in which West Sixth is being accused of infringing on the Magic Hat #9 logo. The brewery has been silent on social media over the past 20 hours or so (as of publishing time) after doing the AMA.

What follows is the results/highlights of that thread in order of the questions/comments that were the most highly upvoted.

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Q: No need to answer, but this whole drama between both companies has turned me off from both of your brands. Would rather support other breweries, try other beers.

A: Totally understand, we hate it too. There were no good options — this was the last thing we wanted to do. We had to take it public when the local reporter called us saying she was writing a story on the lawsuit.

Q: Hi Ben, thanks for taking the time to chat. Let me say that I empathize. Can I ask when (in planning, design, how long after launch?) did it come to your attention that consumers at least noticed a striking similarity? A BeerAdvocate review 5-22-2012 which can’t be too long after launch commented that the labels looked similar. That should be a red flag, no?

A: That’s a good question – don’t know the answer. We opened our doors around 4/1/2012, but had done facebook / website / etc long before that.

Q: Did you take any of this up with you agency who designed your logo? They were sort of irresponsible for not doing their homework before submitting a design that so closely resembles an existing logo in the same category.

A: Our designers are passionate craft beer drinkers, and excellent designers. They’ve designed hundreds of logos, and are well known in the letterpress world. We’ve done nothing wrong, and so they’ve done nothing wrong!

Q: If in 20 years and after some success, if you felt a new brewery was infringing on your logo, how would you feel about them starting a social smearing campaign against you? This would include a petition and fans of that brewery blowing up your Facebook page and Twitter feeds calling you a bully and promising to never drink your beer. They would also have to post daily updates letting everyone know how uncooperative you are.

A: I would hope that even after 20 years I’d have the mindset to talk to the brewery by picking up the phone and talking brewer to brewer rather than lawyer to lawyer.

Q: and you would have been more likely to comply with their request if their brewer had called instead of their lawyer? I find that hard to believe.

A: I certainly think it is easier to negotiate a solution to a problem when you’re talking on the phone business to business rather than exchanging letters back and forth every 3 months.

Q: How exactly would it be easier if they believe that you’re infringing and you believe that you’re not? Sounds like a job for the legal teams from the get-go, and legal issues take time, thinking otherwise is unrealistic. I’ve never heard of a contested infringement case being resolved in less than three months, but I’m not a lawyer, I just drink beer.

A: Well, because maybe we could get to a settlement like the one we proposed (based on their proposed structure). We’ve already offered several changes to our original logo to them – including changing the design of our compass.

Q: While that’s an adorable sentiment, it’s obvious that the Magic Hat brewers have zero say in company trademark disputes. You guys are good at PR. Now fix the logo and get back to making beer.

A: Well, our brewer does, but I understand that it probably isn’t the case everywhere. That said, I just meant someone whose passion was in the brewing business.

Q: What happened between the last letter you sent to Magic Hat and May 16th, 2013?
What did you expect would happen prior to May 16th?
Do you realize anything you say here probably won’t be good for you, assuming this goes to court?
What’s your endgame with the social media blitz?

A: We had not heard anything from them since the last letter, except for the fact that a couple days before they filed the lawsuit, the protested our federal trademark application.
We had hoped that they would continue negotiating in good faith.
Our endgame is to get them to drop the lawsuit, so that we can all get back to brewing beer!

Q: Financially speaking, would W6 be able to survive a court battle? If you were to settle out of court, what do you estimate your rebranding costs would be?

A: We do believe that this actually won’t affect our ability to grow and continue to make really good craft beers!
Don’t think I can answer that last one.

Q: Then why bother with the social media blitz? Why not just go to court? Someone is being dishonest here. I don’t know if it’s Magic Hat or W6.

A: Because going to court is super expensive! 6 figure expensive. We’re a new brewery and would much rather spend our money building the brewery than paying attorneys to litigate. As we said initially: “So, they clearly have another motive – which must be to make us spend so much money defending our actions that we have no other recourse than to cave to their demands.”

Q: It seems like a lot of the contact between the breweries has been between legal counsels. If this doesn’t cross any lines, has there been any personal contact between the breweries? I.e. no lawyers just a Magic Hat (and I mean someone at magic hat, not the parent company) employee and a West Sixth employee?

A: We reached out several times to NAB but our calls were never returned. I also reached out to a lower level person through a personal connection but was told everything was happening above their pay grade.