Commercial Kombucha - Is Tea Trademarked?

I'm sure I'm getting way too technical or paranoid here, but I can't seem to find one single mention of this anywhere online, and I've looked pretty hard.

I really don't know if I'll ever brew kombucha commercially, but I like the thought of that being a possibility someday maybe. One thing I'm not sure about, though, is this: is there a restriction on what tea you can use? That is, do you have to get special licensing permission or something to use a particular company's tea to brew your kombucha if you're going to sell it commercially?

I'm sure I'll just be homebrewing for a long time, but part of the homebrewing process is finding that perfect tea, and it would be a major bummer if I finally perfect a few styles based on a certain tea, only to find I can't use that tea if I decide I want to try and sell the stuff...

Anyone have any idea??

Thanks,
Brian

I'm not a legal expert, but my guess is that as long as you're not using the name, it's just another ingredient in your product. "CherCher's Kombucha" vs "CherCher's Lipton Tea Kombucha."

CHERYLinND said:

I'm not a legal expert, but my guess is that as long as you're not using the name, it's just another ingredient in your product. "CherCher's Kombucha" vs "CherCher's Lipton Tea Kombucha."

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Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking/hoping. I mean, there are tons of products out there where people are using other products as raw ingredients and I think it's totally fine. I also brew beer and I'm pretty sure most people don't create their own yeast, but buy it instead. I guess this just seemed a little different because teas can be pretty complicated, crafted products and make up such a large majority of Kombucha. I was just worried you'd have to license it or something... but yeah, it would make sense if you wanted to use the tea name - otherwise, who's going to know what tea you used.

Well, thanks for helping me (over)think it through a little.

Well if you're planning to sell any type of homebrew even kombucha you're going to need to consult a lawyer anyway. My guess is the big names like Lipton are not going to like their name being mentioned on an unknown brand of kombucha. Once you have sales and such they might be interested in a little 'partnership' if you will. The big names are and have to be quite protective of their brand names lest they become simply common terms like Xerox.

porcupine73 said:

Well if you're planning to sell any type of homebrew even kombucha you're going to need to consult a lawyer anyway. My guess is the big names like Lipton are not going to like their name being mentioned on an unknown brand of kombucha. Once you have sales and such they might be interested in a little 'partnership' if you will. The big names are and have to be quite protective of their brand names lest they become simply common terms like Xerox.

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Yeah, that definitely makes sense if you want to associate yourself with the tea at all. I was really mostly concerned with what happens if you DON'T want to make any mention of the tea... and just use it. I just didn't want to spend a year trying out batch after batch using different teas from different brands, finally finding the perfect combo for a base batch that I want to use indefinitely, only to find 3 years down the road when I have the crazy idea of wanting to brew commercially that I now have to pay the creator of that tea a $10,000 a year licensing fee just to use it in my kombucha, whether I want to use the name or not. Again, I'm not really sure how one would even know for sure that I used one tea or another, but it would be obvious if I were buying tons of it in bulk I would think - and just wanted to see if there was any sort of procedures or rules in place for that. If not, then I'll just put it out of my mind and continue my hunt for my favorite raw tea materials....