Re: Why do you hate Starbucks, are you uncultured?


"svyerkgeniiy" <svyerkgeniiy@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:5f9fe5b2-f347-4a61-bebf-ae7421f94785@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

This is a small part of the whole page, where Black Bear Coffee
roasters created a new dark roast blend called "Charbucks Blend" and
Starbucks lawyers all got in a tizzy over trademark issues. Typical
lawyer crap... forget the real people at the other end.

Actually if you read thru the chronology, it's sort of more a case of fools
(the Black Bear people) going where wise men fear to tread. Any sane person
who gets a cease and desist letter from a billion $ corporation caves in
because the corporation has the $ to litigate you to death. The "Charbucks"
name was a joke (clearly an intentional play on Starbucks/Charred) and not
really a valuable business asset and it would have cost them little to just
back off the joke. Starbucks even generously offered them $10K to pay for
relabeling costs. But miracle of miracles (the gods watch over fools),
Starbucks made some strategic errors - they sued for damages and not just
the name, thus triggering coverage under BB's liability policy, so now the
playing field was leveled.

Usually the merits of the law in these cases makes no difference because
nobody sane is willing to spend the money to litigate them to the bitter
end, but in this case, they were (courtesy of Zurich Ins. Co.) and Black
Bear prevailed (the last note was that Starbucks was appealing as of '06 but
I assume the appeal was denied as most are). It shows you that having a
sense of humor helps - the fact that the name was clearly a joke obviated
the "likelihood of confusion" which is key in trademark law - nobody would
think that they were really getting "Starbucks" if they orders "Charbucks" -
if they had picked something less jokey - say "Sambucks" they would have
lost in court (as the actual Sambucks Cafe did). So did "Xing ba ke
Coffee" in China (Xing means star). OTOH, "Star Bock Beer" won.


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