Ravinia Festival Faces Counterclaims From Ravinia Brewing In Neighborhood Name Dispute

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Representatives of local microbrewery Ravinia Brewing Company this month fired back at the Ravinia Festival Association with a series of counterclaims against the musical nonprofit in their recently revived trademark dispute.

According to the brewing company's response to being sued by the festival association, the association fraudulently obtained its trademark on restaurants with the name of the Ravinia neighborhood and breached its agreement with the brewery.

The brewing company's owners also recently launched a fundraising campaign to help cover the cost of legal fees as it fights the festival in federal court.

"As part of the process of litigation, we have filed our response in court and our responses speak for themselves. To reiterate, Ravinia Brewing has zero desire, and frankly limited funds for a protracted lawsuit, but the actions of the Festival to date is leaving us no choice," they said in an online fundraiser.

Ravinia has been the name of the area since 1873, even before the neighborhood was annexed into Highland Park in 1899, five years before it became the site of the nation's longest-running music festival.

The Ravinia Festival Association was founded in 1936 and now has more than $200 million in assets, with its CEO, Jeff Haydon, collecting about $600,000 in total compensation, according to the nonprofit's latest tax filing.

The Ravinia Brewing Company was founded in 2014 by several residents of the Ravinia neighborhood who commute from the Ravinia Metra station and whose children attend Ravinia schools, according to a Jan. 8 court filing submitted on their behalf.

The brewery filed trademarked its name in 2015, began selling its beer in Highland Park the following year and in 2017 began brewing brewing at a brewery and taproom in Chicago's Albany Park neighborhood. It faced no opposition from the festival's trademark attorneys at white-shoe law firm Perkins Coie, the filing alleges.

In 2017, ahead of the planned opening of a taproom on Roger Williams Boulevard in Highland Park, representatives of the brewery and festival met to discuss possible collaboration. That summer, the brewing company sold its beer at a tasting event at the festival grounds. According to the brewers, no one from the festival ever expressed concerns of consumer confusion or trademark infringement.

But in February 2018, festival representatives broke off negotiations and demanded royalties for use of the word "Ravinia," effectively blocking the opening of the new brewpub.

Following widespread outrage from the community, the festival association bought a full-page newspaper advertisement in which its then-CEO, Welz Kauffman, backtracked on its demands of the brewing company it had communicated in writing.

"Without getting into legalese, we have just one issue with this company, the issue of brand confusion," Kaufman said. "This issue could be cleared up through such simple steps as increasing the size of the words 'Brewing Company' in the company's logo and coupling the word 'Brewing' along with the word 'Ravinia' on its promotional materials and social media posts."

In May 2018, the two parties came to an agreement, and the Highland Park brewpub opened for business late that summer.

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For five years, the festival made no complaints or accuse the brewery of violating that agreement, according to its recently filed counter-claim.

But in August 2023, festival representatives sent a letter in which they claimed they had unilaterally withdrawn from the agreement they made more than five years earlier, although it contains no such provision for unilateral withdrawal.

Brewing company representatives met with the CEO and board chair of the festival association following the letter and found that the shift from 12 ounce to 16 ounce cans meant the printing changed the size of the lettering to make the term "brewing" slightly less than 28 percent of the size of the word "Ravinia," as required by the agreement.

"Although the difference was imperceptible, [Ravinia Brewing Company] changed the printing on its beer cans to conform to the 2018 Agreement. None of [Ravinia Festival Association's] trademarks cover brewing or selling beer," attorney Shelley Smith alleged on behalf of the brewery.

Ravinia Brewing Company's 52-page answer and counterclaim denied that it ever committed a material breach of the agreement. But the festival, by filing a lawsuit after groundlessly withdrawing from the agreement, violated it and committed a breach of contract, according to the counterclaim.

In a separate count, Smith points out that the festival association's 2011 trademark for exclusive rights to use the "Ravinia" name for "Restaurant Services; Catering Services; Offering Banquet Facilities" was obtained fraudulently.

In 2010, Bernadette Petrauskas, the festival's finance director, signed a sworn declaration asserting that no one else was using the name for restaurants or food and that it had been in the festival's "substantially exclusive and continuous use" for that purpose for at least five years.

But, according to the counterclaim, Petrauskas' declaration was fraudulent because there were already at least two area restaurants using the name — the Ravinia Green Country Club and the Ravinia BBQ and Grill.

Another allegation in the suit highlights the festival's misleading marketing claims about its contributions to the community.

Eric Brandfonbrener, an attorney for the festival with Perkins Coie, alleged that the festival has a "strong commitment to its Highland Park neighbors, annually contributing 5% (approximately $1,000,000) of ticket sales to the Highland Park community," according to the complaint against the brewery.

The Ravinia Festival website makes a similar claim — asserting that it "gives Highland Park five percent of its annual gross ticket revenue."

However, the counterclaim points out that this purported donation is, in fact, a pass-through of the municipal admissions fee that the city charges the festival association under a 2009 agreement by which the city agrees not to impose any amusement tax like the 10 percent assessed by Chicago or the 9 percent Evanston will charge Northwestern University for events at its future combination sports arena-concert venue.

"[Ravinia Festival Association] is not only avoiding what would amount to more than $2,000,000 a year in taxes to the City of Highland Park if the amusement tax was administered in line with other municipalities," the brewery's attorney alleged, "but it is also misappropriating this cozy relationship by egregiously calling these taxes a donation for marketing benefit and to support its claim as a 'not-for-profit' organization."

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Since the initial dispute between the microbrewery and the festival, one of the brewing company's owners, Jeff Hoobler, won election to the Highland Park City Council, despite being the one candidate who was notably not endorsed by Mayor Nancy Rotering.

Hoobler is now organizing the online fundraiser for fees to cover the cost of his company's legal battle with the nonprofit, which had collected 55 donations worth more than $6,300 in its first three days.

"While we are confident that the facts and rule of law are on our side, the facts and law don't often matter if you don't have the financial means to fight. It is no secret that the hospitality industry has been hit hard by the pandemic and unprecedented inflation, leading to more than 35 closures of breweries in Illinois over the last 12 months. As you can imagine - this is simply not a fight we can afford to take on without financial support," Hoobler and co-owners said in the appeal.

"As the owners of Ravinia Brewing Co., our families have put our hearts and souls into building our business. We barely survived Covid, and are now at risk of unjustly losing the business we have worked so hard to create," they said. "Our homes are literally on the line as collateral against the business."

The association's attorneys have until Feb. 5 to respond to the brewery's counterclaim before discovery in the suit is scheduled to begin later in the month, according to court records, and the judge in the case ordered both sides to hold a pre-settlement teleconference on Feb. 14 to discuss whether to schedule a mediation.

Earlier: Ravinia Festival Sues Ravinia Brewing Over Use Of Neighborhood Name