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Community Beer Works to trademark a series of digits

July 7, 2011 – Buffalo, NY – Community Beer Works is proud to announce today that it has filed with the US Patent and Trademark Office, requesting the trade and service marks for the digits 716.

This decision came about after the announcement that Anheuser Busch was seeking the trademarks of area codes for 14 US cities: 314 (St Louis), 412 (Pittsburgh), 305 (Miami), 619 (San Diego), 202 (Washington, D.C.), 602 (Phoenix), 704 (Charlotte), 702 (Las Vegas), 214 (Dallas), 415 (San Francisco), 216 (Cleveland), 303 (Denver), 615 (Nashville) and 713 (Houston). These will presumably be used to create “local” beers similar to Goose Island’s existing 312 Urban Wheat, which uses the Chicago area code.

“Well, we heard the news and realized this was a great idea,” CBW’s president, Ethan Cox, says. “We checked and saw that Flying Bison didn’t have the trademark yet and figured hey, why not?” When asked what sort of beer 716 would be, Cox shrugged. “I dunno. We haven’t really thought this through. It was more of a cash grab, to be honest.”

In addition to 716, CBW also filed for a trademark for the number 585. “We won’t be distributing to the Rochester area,” Cox admits, “but we’d prefer to own the trademark if we could. Hey, Three Heads,” he adds, making a phone gesture with his right thumb and pinkie, “call me.”

“We’re really excited about this,” CBW’s self-described “web monkey,” Dan Conley, adds. “As far as we can tell, we own every instance of the number 716. A second grade math test has the question ‘What is 805-89’? Pay up!” When told trademarks did not work this way, Conley responded that he was pretty sure they did.

“Once we had filed for 716 and 585,” Cox says, “we decided to go nuts. Some of us are Discordians, so we filed for 23 and 5. Then we really went crazy: we had gotten a taste for USPTO applications. We wondered if we could trademark pi! So we did. Then also 42, 1,337 and 7,324. We don’t even have a reason for that last one. We just had Rudy mash the number pad on his laptop.”

When asked if these trademarks would further CBW’s self-proclaimed quest to “embeer Buffalo,” Cox responded, “Yeah, I dunno, sure.”

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About Community Beer Works: Community Beer Works (CBW) is a Buffalo, NY based “nanobrewery” in the process of opening. They have decided that making money and being evil was more fun than genuinely caring about their community, which had until recently been their plan.

About this press release: Very little of it is true.