SFL Friday -- Sometimes an "Ale House" Is Just an Ale House.

I don't know about you, but this Lanham Act case involving two generic-sounding "ale houses" in Boca is my idea of Sartre's No Exit.

In fact, I'd rather spend an eternity locked in a dark room with [insert opposing counsel you hate the most] than have a few beers at either of these establishments:

We find nothing particularly unique in a restaurant fixing its name in red letters on the outside of its building and on its menu, branding items it sells with that name, dressing its staff in khakis and a polo shirt, featuring a center bar with a soffit, offering seating at “high-top” tables, and paneling its walls with wood. These are the prototypical features—what we might call the “common . . . design,” Brooks Shoe, 716 F.2d at 858—of a standard sports bar or brew pub. The particular name affixed on the wall and to menu items, the specific color of the polo shirts, the type of wood on the walls, the placement of the “high-top” tables, and the openness of the kitchen,14 “even if they in combination could be deemed unique,” Wiley v. American Greetings Corp., 762 F.2d 139, 142 (1st Cir. 1985), are all “mere refinement[s]” of this “commonly-adopted and well-known form of ornamentation.”

What, no bibs and buttons?

"My buns have no seeds."