Intellectual property
Starbucks U.S. Brands, LLC, is a Starbucks-owned company that currently holds and owns the property rights to approximately 120 Starbucks Coffee Company patents and trademarks. It is located at 2525 Starbucks Way in Minden, Nevada.[50]
[edit] Name
The company is named in part after Starbuck, Captain Ahab's first mate in the novel Moby-Dick, as well as a turn-of-the-century mining camp (Starbo or Storbo) on Mount Rainier. According to Howard Schultz's book Pour Your Heart Into It: How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time, the name of the company was derived from Moby-Dick, although not in as direct a fashion as many assume. Gordon Bowker liked the name "Pequod" (the ship in the novel), but his then creative partner Terry Heckler responded, "No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!" Heckler suggested "Starbo". Brainstorming with these two ideas resulted in the company being named for the Pequod's first mate, Starbuck.[51]
[edit] International names
Starbucks is known internationally by the following names:
- Arabic-speaking countries: ستاربكس (transliteration: stārbaks)
- Bulgaria: Старбъкс (transliteration: Starbâks)
- China,Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan: 星巴克 Pinyin: xīngbākè (星 xīng means "star", while 巴克 is a transliteration of "-bucks")
- Israel: סטארבקס (transliteration: sṭārbaqs)
- Japan: スターバックス (transliteration: sutābakkusu)
- Russia: Старбакс (transliteration: Starbaks)
- South Korea: 스타벅스 (transliteration: seutabeokseu), often used in conjunction with the English name
- Quebec, Canada: Café Starbucks Coffee[52]
- Thailand: สตาร์บัคส์ pronounced [satāːbākʰ]
[edit] Logo
In 2006, Valerie O'Neil, a Starbucks spokeswoman, said that the logo is an image of a "twin-tailed siren".[53] The logo has been significantly streamlined over the years. In the first version, which was based on a 17th-century Norse woodcut[51], the Starbucks siren was topless and had a fully visible double fish tail. The image also had a rough visual texture and has been likened to a melusine.[54] In the second version, which was used from 1987–92, her breasts were covered by her flowing hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, used since 1992, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. The original "woodcut" logo has been moved to the Starbuck's Headquarters in Seattle.
At the beginning of September 2006 and then again in early 2008, Starbucks temporarily reintroduced its original brown logo on paper hot-drink cups. Starbucks has stated that this was done to show the company's heritage from the Pacific Northwest and to celebrate 35 years of business. The vintage logo sparked some controversy due in part to the siren's bare breasts,[55] but the temporary switch garnered little attention from the media. Starbucks had drawn similar criticism when they reintroduced the vintage logo in 2006.[56] The logo was altered when Starbucks entered the Saudi Arabian market in 2000 to remove the mermaid, leaving only her crown,[57] as reported in a Pulitzer Prize-winning column by Colbert I. King in The Washington Post in 2002. The company announced three months later that it would be using the international logo in Saudi Arabia.[58]
[edit] Parodies and infringements
Starbucks is a frequent target of parodies and imitations of its logo, and often uses legal action against those it perceives to be infringing on its intellectual property. In 2000, San Francisco cartoonist Kieron Dwyer was sued by Starbucks for copyright and trademark infringement after creating a parody of its siren logo and putting it on the cover of one of his comics; later placing it on coffee mugs, t-shirts, and stickers that he sold on his website and at comic book conventions. Dwyer felt that since his work was a parody it was protected by his right to free speech under U.S. law. The case was eventually settled out of court, as Dwyer claimed he did not have the financial ability to endure a trial case with Starbucks. The judge agreed that Dwyer's work was a parody and thus enjoyed constitutional protection; however, he was forbidden from financially "profiting" from using a "confusingly similar" image of the Starbucks siren logo. Dwyer is currently allowed to display the image as an expression of free speech, but he can no longer sell it.[59] In a similar case, a New York store selling stickers and T-shirts using the Starbucks logo with the words "fuck off" was sued by the company in 1999.[60][61] An anti-Starbucks website, starbuckscoffee.co.uk, which encouraged people to deface the Starbucks logo[62] was transferred to Starbucks by Nominet UK, the registry for .uk domain names in 2005.[63][64] Christian bookstores and websites in the US are selling a T-shirt featuring a logo with the mermaid replaced by Jesus and the words "Sacrificed for me" around the edge.[65]
Other successful cases filed by Starbucks include the case won in 2006 against the chain Xingbake in Shanghai, China for trademark infringement, because the chain used a green-and-white logo with a name that sounded phonetically similar to the Chinese for Starbucks.[66] Starbucks did not open any stores after first registering its trademark in Russia in 1997 and in 2002 a Russian lawyer successfully filed a request to cancel the trademark. He then registered the name with a Moscow company and asked for $600,000 to sell the trademark to Starbucks, but was ruled against in November 2005.[14] A coffee store owner in Oregon called Sam Buck was prohibited from using her name on the shop front in 2006.[67]
In 2003, Starbucks sent a cease-and-desist letter to "HaidaBucks Coffee House" in Masset, British Columbia, Canada. The store was owned by a group of young Haida men, commonly referred to as "bucks." After facing criticism, Starbucks dropped its demand after HaidaBucks dropped "coffee house" from its name.[68]
Other cases have gone against the company. In 2005 Starbucks lost a trademark infringement case against a smaller coffee vendor in South Korea that operates coffee stations under the name Starpreya. The company, Elpreya, says Starpreya is named after the Norse goddess, Freja, with the letters of that name changed to ease pronunciation by Koreans. The court rejected Starbucks' claim that the logo of Starpreya is too similar to their own logo.[69] A bar owner in Galveston, Texas, USA won the right to sell "Star Bock Beer" after a lawsuit by Starbucks in 2003 after he registered the name, but the 2005 federal court ruling also stated that the sale of the beer must be restricted to Galveston, a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court in 2007.[70]
Ongoing cases include a dispute over the copyright application for Seattle’s Rat City Rollergirls logo in 2008[71] The company claimed the roller derby league’s logo by a Washington artist[72] was too similar to its own. Starbucks requested an extension to further examine the issue and possibly issue a complaint, which was granted by the Trademark Office. The July 16, 2008 deadline passed without action by the corporation.[73] Starbucks launched action against an Indian cosmetics business run by Shaznaz Husain, after she applied to register the name Starstruck for use with coffee and related products. She said her aim was to open a chain of stores selling coffee and chocolate-based cosmetics.[67]
Others have used the Starbucks logo unaltered and without permission, such as a café in Pakistan that used the logo in 2003 in its advertisements[74] and a cafe in Cambodia in 2009, the owner saying that "whatever we have done we have done within the law".[75]
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