You may have heard by now that last week someone filed a lawsuit against Starbucks for, essentially, putting ice in their iced drinks. Give Me a Break. "Take, for example, Starbuck, a character in Battlestar Galactica. Earlier this year, Starbucks released its “Unicorn Frappuccino” for a limited time between April 19th and 23rd. PayPal has accused PayTM of copying its logo to grow its own user base. She's got one little 10-foot-wide shop. Or maybe the original Starbuck in Moby Dick should sue Starbucks. Aspirin was once a brand name so was thermos, trampoline, cube steak, cellophane, elevator and escalator. "There 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. This, in turn, immediately caused consumer confusion whereby customers began referring to Starbucks’ product as a ‘Unicorn Latte,’ began assuming that [The End’s] product was a copy-cat or knockoff, and began asking employees at The End to serve them a ‘Unicorn Frappuccino.’” As a result, The End feels that consumers were misled to believe that it was copying Starbucks, ultimately causing irreparable damage to The End’s reputation and claim to fame. And Sambucks sells things like beef jerky. "If you look into what is at stake in trademarks, it's actually not unreasonable and it probably was a wise choice for Starbucks to, to sue in this case," said Fordham University law professor Hugh Hansen.You can guess what came next. According to the complaint, “[d]espite the distinctive name, the Unicorn Latte contained no coffee or milk and was instead a freshly-made blended beverage containing fresh ingredients such as cold-pressed ginger, lemon juice, dates, cashews, blended with additional healthy, dried ingredients such as maca root, blue-green algae, and vanilla bean.”The End, a small cafe located in New York City, claims to have been the originators of the unicorn drink social media sensation. Even the coffee blends the company uses are targets. said Buck.One Sambucks customer told us, "I just can't imagine anyone could be confused between the two, and I don't see how this possibly could be a threat to a corporation that big. You won't find that at Starbucks.Buck is actually her maiden name.
It's about setting a precedent, he says. . If it was just her own name, I mean why didn't she say Sam, new word, Buck's? There's a certain color scheme that you find at many of their locations and there are lots of tables where people sit and log on to the Internet. "Ultimately, what she is doing is using or associating with someone else's goodwill intentionally. Sam even delivers coffee to neighboring stores that want it. Up here, when people want their coffee they often head to a little shop run by Sam Buck. It therefore has sent the case back to the EUIPO to consider Starbucks’ claims of confusion and unfair advantage in light of its finding that there was at least some similarity of marks. Below are the mentioned 5 Trademark Infringement Cases with very relevant lessons applicable to any company: Starbucks v. Freddoccino; Starbucks Corporation, American coffee company, and coffeehouse chain were founded in 1971 in Seattle, Washington. Sept. 5, 2017).Complaint, Montauk Juice Factory Inc., The End Brooklyn v. Starbucks Corporation d/b/a Starbucks Coffee Company, WL 1747128 (E.D.N.Y. The inventor of those products lost their valuable exclusives on those names because they fell into common use. New York alone has several hundred.
In 2003, Starbucks sued Haidabucks coffee in remote Canada. WIPR spoke to Batur Oktay and Kim Teraberry about the company’s strategy for protecting its IP.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. … Starbucks? Starbucks wouldn't talk to me about this, but before I could say Give Me a Break to them, I went to a trademark lawyer and asked if this is unreasonable on Starbucks part. I thought, is this real? Starbucks hasn't sued them -- yet.The judge ordered her to drop the name Buck from everything: her coffee cups, cards and front window.The Sambucks case is not the first time Starbucks has fought to preserve its trademark. According to lawsuit, which filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in New York, the End Brooklyn and its owner, Montauk Juice …
Knowing about the trademark infringement of popular companies would help you to avoid the trademark issues of your business. We shall have to wait and see what the EUIPO Board of Appeal decides after it has taken in … It's clearly a small-town business.