“The moment it struck me was when someone sent me a [release] was made available on Yahoo,” said Larsen, one of the Spiritless co-founders. “I said, ‘What the hell, why is this guy talking about us?'”
Around the same time, another press release announced the launch of NOLOalcohol, a new e-commerce marketplace for non-alcoholic spirits. It is said to have been founded by Sylvie Grattagliano, Reynald’s wife. (He says the couple is in the process of getting a divorce.)
The now-defunct site includes products from many brands, but if you try to add any of them to your cart, it will say they’re out of stock — and instead that invites you to try one of ArKay’s brands. Lancaster says that as the campaign ramped up, she and her co-founders heard from a number of customers who thought they bought a Kentucky 74 but never received anything or received the The bottle has an unsatisfactory appearance.
A week after NOLOalcohol launched, Grattagliano announced that a nonprofit he had founded, called the Non-Alcoholic Spirits Association of America, would begin “holding brands accountable” for the recommend non-alcoholic beverages that actually contain some alcohol. (Many of these brands have 0.5% alcohol by volume or less rather than literally alcohol-free; the Food and Drug Administration considers this a “trace amount,” and watch them like non-alcoholic beverages.) AAFSA soon announced investigations into Ritual Zero Proof and Seedlip, which were subsequently accused of being “STRONGLY REYNALD GRATTGLIANO AND MY IDEA STEAL AWAY.” Branson says he didn’t impersonate Grattagliano or steal his ideas.
The AAFSA website currently lists Reyland Grattagliano as the sole founder. One of its only members appears to be an e-commerce site called Drinksalikes.com, which sells knockoff versions of the Kentucky 74, ArKay, Seedlip and Ritual Zero Proof, claims each product page. product that it is “not connected in any way” to any of the trademarks. The About page for Drinksalike.com includes a product photo of ArKay’s alcohol-free vodka and says, “Arkay got its start in our kitchen lab over a decade ago.” Grattagliano acknowledges the site as his project but says, “So far we’re not promoting it.”
Grattagliano may have come up with the concept of AAFSA from his own experience. In 2019, a trade group called the Scotch Whiskey Association said it was investigating ArKay over how the company labeled its version of alcohol-free whiskey, alleging it could be misleading to consumers. consumers and damage the reputation of the category. ArKay later said it changed the description of its products to emphasize that they were not actually made with alcohol.
Grattagliano was previously accused of registering domain names linking to his competitors. In the late ’90s, while he was working in the perfume industry, Grattagliano and the businesses he ran were sued by at least two rivals for trademark infringement, according to public court records. One of the brands affected was Calvin Klein, which accused Grattagliano of creating a clone of its Ck One perfume line. (He later agreed to stop producing it.)
The other is Jean Philippe Fragrances, who settled with Grattagliano – who also goes by the name Reynald Katz – after accusing him of knowingly purchasing domain names that infringed his trademark, including jeanphilippefrangrance.com and jeanphilippe.com .
Buying someone else’s trademarked domain name in it is called an internet transaction and is almost as old as the internet itself. In 1999, the National Assembly out of law the practice. But Grattagliano says he got hold of domain names that corresponded to other companies’ products before the trademark was registered in the first place. “Many competitors are so focused on killing me that they forget to register their trademarks and domains,” says Grattagliano. “It is therefore my job to protect my business by keeping my trademark and domain name secure.”
