Starbucks trademarks will not be protected in Russia!

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After Starbucks announced the suspension of its business in Russia and launched the Russian market last year, Anton Pinsky, founder of Pinskiy&Co, a famous local catering company, partnered with Russian rapper Timati to acquire Starbucks' Russian assets (equipment and venues, excluding trademarks and formulations) for about 500m roubles ($6 million).

After the acquisition, Timati called for advice on social media to solicit names and logo designs for the coffee chain, and in order not to make consumers feel strange, he said he wanted the name and logo to remain similar.

The end result of the makeover is indeed highly similar. "Starbuck" was renamed "Stats Coffee", and the mermaid in the original iconic green logo was replaced by a girl with a traditional Russian headdress, kokoshnik, with a strong Russian style.

After a makeover, Star Coffee reopened to receive Russian consumers. Although some netizens have questioned whether Starbucks coffee with high similarity has caused infringement to Starbucks, Russian consumers prefer coffee shops to provide the same good products and consumer experience as before. Therefore, the trademark issue has been controversial, but it has not affected the business of the store.

Recently, however, according to the Russian International News Agency reported on the 17th, the subsequent owners of the Russian Starbucks chain asked the court to end the legal protection of the trademark of the American company.

Reported that after the cooperative acquisition of Starbucks' Russian assets, the owner of Starbucks Coffee filed a claim with the Russian intellectual property Court on April 12, asking the court to end the legal protection of Starbucks trademarks, involving a total of seven Starbucks trademarks, including Starbucks images and text elements registered in Russia from 2003 to 2014. At the same time, the plaintiff asked the court to stop the protection of trademarks related to two types of services, such as restaurants, cafes, cafes and snack bars.

The claim was made to the court because although Starbucks withdrew from the Russian market and sold its assets in 2022, the exclusive rights of Starbucks trademarks in Russia have been extended to 2033, according to Russian court filings.

However, after the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Russian court did not re-issue new legal provisions or relevant rules on trademark protection and trademark similarity in trademark examination, and similar judgment standards for goods and services, which can make Starbucks acquisition of Starbucks and highly imitated Star Coffee a bit of a headache.

The owner of Star Coffee has previously said that there will be an expansion of the number of stores after reopening, but if it is to spread everywhere, the trademarks currently used by Star Coffee and the graphics and characters that may need to be registered in the future may be at risk of infringing Starbucks, and may even face high compensation.

Therefore, before implementing the store expansion plan, the owner of Star Coffee first put forward a proposal to reduce trademark risk and prevent problems in this way.

Picture from: Internet

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