The Scotch Whiskey Association v. Consolidated Distilled Products, Inc.

The Scotch Whiskey Association (plaintiff) was an association comprised of Scottish Whiskey distillers who worked to promote the interests and trade of Scottish-produced whiskey. When Consolidated Distilled Products, Inc. (defendant) applied to register Loch-A-Moor as a trademark for an after-dinner liqueur that it produced and sold in the United States, Scotch Whiskey filed an opposition on the ground that the Loch-A-Moor trademark was deceptive as to the geographic origin of the product or, more specifically, that it falsely described the product as being of Scottish origin in violation of § 1125(a) of the Lanham Act. Scotch Whiskey then engaged a firm to conduct a survey to ascertain what place of origin consumers associated with the Loch-A-Moor trademark. The survey was conducted through face-to-face interviews in three major metropolitan-area shopping centers. Each survey was conducted by paid interviewers who were supervised by professionals. The interviewers were never informed for whom the survey was being conducted. The survey population consisted of people who had either purchased or consumed an after-dinner liqueur within the previous 12 months. Each person within the survey population was shown a bottle of the product bearing the Loch-A-Moor trademark and then asked the following questions: (1) “Where do you think this liquor comes from?” and (2) “Why do you think it comes from (that place)?” The interviewers recorded all responses verbatim and telephoned about 40 percent of all respondents after-the-fact to verify their responses and thereby validate the survey results. There was a total of 607 people in the survey population, out of which 32.7 percent gave Scotland as their response to the first question. And out of those people, the majority gave the Loch-A-Moor trademark as their response to the second question.