STARBUCKS
“In most countries, we can resolve things through cease and desist letters, but in some countries—China and Russia for example—that doesn’t always work,” says Teraberry. “It’s really the sheer volume of cases that can be a challenge and some of them are in more remote areas so it might take us longer to find out about them. Tere might be a two-storey ‘Starbucks’ that has the look and feel or the exact logo, or the Chinese name is infringed quite a bit. But they’re pretty blatant and, a lot of the time, a cease and desist letter doesn’t tend to work.”
Indeed, the company has experience of litigating cases in China—in 2006, it successfully won a case in Shanghai against Xingbake, a Chinese imitator. ‘Xing’ means Star in Chinese, while Bake sounds like Bucks. Te company also used a green logo that looked similar to Starbucks’. Te case went to court, which found in favour of Starbucks, fining Xingbake and ordering it to cease the infringement.
“We’ve litigated so far in the bigger cities [in China]
...so we haven’t had to deal with some of the remoter, maybe less IP-friendly courts,” Teraberry says.
Clearly though, not all infringements take place in developing countries. For trademark enforcement, the company uses a hub and spokes model, working directly with outside counsel across the world. Tere are four attorneys in-house working on trademarks, who each take a geographic zone as their responsibility.
So while China might pose particular difficulties, Starbucks is as likely to have to deal with infringement closer to home. In recent years, it has had to deal with Sambuck’s, a coffeehouse in Oregon, Starbock beer in Texas, and in Canada, it had a dispute with the coffee company HaidaBucks for infringement. Some were critical of these cases, especially the Sambuck’s matter, which was narrated in the popular media as a classic case of a big corporation bullying a small operator, whose only crime was to be called Sambucks. Whether this is an accurate representation is doubtful, but in any event, an aggressive policy by definition has to apply across the board—not just to infringements that are particularly blatant.
Te key to all Starbucks’ trademark activity, no matter what the country, is flexibility.
“We’re pretty aggressive in protecting the brand. Tere are a lot of cases that are pretty blatant infringements, but for any case, we’re constantly evaluating strategies country by country, reality checks, budgets—all of that comes together when you’re deciding what strategy to take case by case,” says Teraberry.
Oktay adds: “I think it really depends on the particular degree, how strong our brand is, how many other marks there are that are similar—we sort of do it market by market, but I think generally we try and protect the core brands like Starbucks and the logo as broadly as we can.”
In Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, Starbuck is the first mate on the whaling ship Pequod. Loyal and conscientious, he would have made a good trademark attorney, believing that “the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril”. As a brand, Starbucks relies heavily on a ‘fair estimation’ of the threats it faces—it’s a strategy that seems to be working.
www.worldipreview.com
World Intellectual Property Review May/June 2010
31
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80