Do you want a Budweiser or a Budweiser?

One thing I forgot to mention during the beer tour post was what we learned about Budweiser.  Most people in the US know the story of Adolphus Busch who makes his way to St. Louis and made the beer he knew from Europe.  What I did not know was that Budweiser has been made in the Czech Republic since the 1250's, but was never trademarked.  Now this may be the Czech side of the story, but our guide said that the name was not trademarked, so Busch came back to Europe, trained on how to make Budweiser and made it in the US with the same recipe, name and logo.  Apparently it took years for the europeans to find out and has led to the longest lasting trademark dispute in history, still unresolved but being fought in 140 countries.  The upshot of this is I finally understand why you usually hear US Budweiser followed by Anheuser-Busch and in Europe it is called Budweiser Budvar.  Probably more than you needed to know, but time for me to do more research on Budvar.