SEOUL: Starbucks, the world's largest coffee-shop chain, with more than 12,000 stores, has lost a trademark dispute with a South Korean company that sells coffee from roving outlets in trucks.
The Patent Court of Korea dismissed a claim that Elpreya's brand name "Starpreya" should be canceled because of confusion with the U.S. company's name, the court said in a ruling dated Sept. 20 that was posted on its Web site Wednesday.
"We named our brand after Northern Europe's goddess Preya and it has nothing to do with Starbucks," the chairman of Elpreya, Kim Woo Ki, said. The letters of the name of the Norse goddess Freja were changed to ease pronunciation by Koreans, he said.
While the South Korean company's logo is a woman's face within a circle of green, similar to the symbol of Starbucks, the court last year rejected the claim by the Seattle-based retailer that they were too alike
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I think if the case were tried in the US that Starbucks would've won that case. I don't look too closely at logos, so if it seems similar, I'd think that it would be a case of "causing confusion". I would think that the Korean company was a subsidiary of the Starbucks Company and associte it with the quality and purchase it under that premise.
ReplyDeleteI would also agree with Ty, and if this were a case in the U.S., it may be a different outcome. In Korea, they would not have regional competition and therefore possible confusion of the two marks.
ReplyDeleteI'm looking at this in terms of dilution of value, market share, and wrongful doing. I don't know how many starbucks there are in South Korea. If there were a lot, then there is infringement due to various negative impacts on the founding companies'(starbucks) trademark.
ReplyDeleteA more difficult question might involve a scenario where there are no starbucks in South Korea. If everyone knows there are no starbucks in South Korea, but there is this knockoff brand, is it really infringing? The fact that starbucks holds no market share there might lead me to say no. I guess starbucks might argue that it's a reasonable area of expansion should they ever to decide to build there, but what if they never do?
Dave