Caught-On-Bleu Inc. of Franconia can no longer use the name.

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – A New Hampshire brewery cannot use the name “Billy Budd” for its ale, because beer drinkers might confuse it with the “Bud” family of beers, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge Joseph DiClerico ruled against Caught-On-Bleu Inc. of Franconia in a trademark infringement lawsuit brought last year by Anheuser-Busch Inc., the makers of Budweiser.

He did not award attorney’s fees to Anheuser-Busch, however, saying the nation’s largest brewery failed to show the owners of Caught-On-Bleu intentionally and maliciously tried to capitalize on the “Bud” trademark.

“It was a dark and stormy night in November 1995 when COB’s president, Lisamarie Sapuppo-Bertrand, first thought of naming a product after Billy Budd, the title character from Herman Melville’s posthumously published and unfinished work, ‘Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative),”‘ DiClerico wrote.

That was a rare bit of judicial humor in an otherwise technical case that hinged largely on the similarity of the products, their names, and the likelihood of consumer confusion.

Anheuser-Busch commissioned a survey of people who might drink microbrewery beers. The survey found that 25 percent of them, when shown the “Billy Budd” tap handle, thought it was sold by the maker of Budweiser or with Anheuser-Busch’s permission.

“Billy Budd” ale was sold only in the fall of 1999 in four New Hampshire bars and offered at a beer tasting festival at Southern New Hampshire University.

Anheuser-Busch sued in April 2002, and Caught-On-Bleu then countersued, accusing the behemoth brewery of pressuring the ale’s distributor to drop “Billy Budd Classic American Ale” and discouraging other distributors from picking it up.

DiClerico dismissed those claims in July.