Starbucks v. Starpreya

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports today that Starbucks lost a trademark infringement case against a smaller coffee vendor in South Korea that operates coffee stations under the name and style 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. Last year, the court rejected the Seattle-based retailer's claim that the logo of Starpreya is too similar to the famous Starbucks logo.

How did Starbucks get its name?

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 creative partner Terry Heckler objected: "No one's going to drink a cup of Pee-quod!" Heckler suggested "Starbo," the name of a mining camp on Mount Rainier. Combining the Moby-Dick idea with "Starbo" resulted in the company being named for the Pequod's first mate, Starbuck.[3]

The company logo is a two-tailed siren. The logo has been streamlined over the years. In the first version, the Starbucks siren had bare breasts and a fully-visible double fish tail. In the second version, her breasts were covered by hair, but her navel was still visible, and the fish tail was cropped slightly. In the current version, her navel and breasts are not visible at all, and only vestiges remain of the fish tails. The original logo can still be seen on the Starbucks store in Seattle's Pike Place Market.

At the beginning of September 2006, Starbucks temporarily reintroduced their original brown logo on paper hot beverage 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, however the vintage logo has sparked some controversy due to the siren's bare chest.[4] Recently, an elementary school principal in Kent, Washington was reported as asking teachers to "cover up" the mermaid of the retro cups with a cup sleeve of some kind. [5]

Starbucks vigilantly protects its trademarks and brand names on a case-by-case basis in many different legal jurisdictions around the world, as the company pursues an aggressive expansion targetting 40,000 retail outlets.