(Updates with details of the settlement.)

Somewhere amid the suburban sprawl of northern Plano, some corporate lawyers are probably patting themselves on the back for their victory. Last week, Dr Pepper Snapple reached a settlement with the company that made Dublin Dr Pepper that essentially ends the unique sub-brand of soft drink.

Dublin Dr Pepper, of course, was made by the small town company in Erath County that used vintage 1920s equipment. I was through Dublin last fall and stopped off at Old Doc’s Soda Shop adjacent to the plant for a fountain version of the iconic soft drink made with pure cane sugar.

Old Doc’s will still be there, and the plant, now known as Dublin Bottling Works, will still bottle other soft drinks, but the Dublin name will be removed. Dr Pepper will supply the sugar-based version of its signature product to the Dublin area from other plants, but the drink will no longer be known as “Dublin Dr Pepper.” The company said it will support the annual Dr Pepper festival in Dublin — in which the town is renamed “Dr Pepper, Texas,” for a day — but somehow, the crowning of Miss Pretty Peggy Pepper will lose some allure.

Dr Pepper Snapple argued that the Dublin name infringed on its trademark and that the small-town company was violating its licensing agreement by selling soft drinks under the Dublin name far beyond its prescribed territory.

“Every bottle or can Dublin sold outside of its territory was a sale from a rightful Dr Pepper bottler,” Dr Pepper Snapple spokesman Chris Barnes told me. “We have a responsibility to protect our trademark as well as our other bottlers.”

Dublin Dr Pepper, though, had something that no trademark agreement or licensing deal can capture: mystique. To use a more modern term, it created buzz. I’m not sure that people who can’t buy a bottle of Dublin DP will settle for some of the ordinary, corn-syrup-sweetened variety.

As I pointed out when the case was first filed, Dublin Dr Pepper was one of the earliest cases of viral marketing. It was the stuff of Texas lore, something that I recently had to explain to relatives in other states who wondered why I had my picture taken with my daughter in front of Old Doc’s and posted it on my Facebook page.

Coca-Cola and Pepsi have nothing that compares. Dr Pepper Snapple may have won the legal battle, but it has lost something intangible, something that made its product unique in the beverage world.

“We tried for years to resolve our issues with them,” Barnes said. “They continued to violate our agreement.”

Barnes is quick to point out that sugar-sweetened Dr Pepper is available from other bottlers, including in the Houston area, but that misses the point. By putting the legal kibosh on its Dublin cousin, Dr Pepper has become just another soft drink and made itself look like a bully in the process.