Ethiopian coffee bean story features, historical flavor, description of origin culture

Ethiopian coffee bean story features, historical flavor, description of origin culture

Getachew Mengistie, director of Ethiopia's Bureau of intellectual property, bluntly pointed out that farmers sell raw beans for $1.45 a pound, while Starbucks sells for $26 a pound in the United States, 18 times the price difference between the two places. The reason is that Ethiopia does not know how to use intellectual property rights to create value for farmers. As long as it has the name of Ethiopian boutique beans, it can be marketed in the United States at three times the price of ordinary commercial beans. You know, investing in baking, packaging and marketing equipment through downstream channels in the United States alone cannot create such a huge added value, because most of the value comes from the coffee producing area (if Starbucks is not branded as "Sidamo", you can't sell it at such a high price. He stressed: "Ethiopia is the birthplace of coffee. Of course, the famous producing areas have huge marketing value, but they are ignored by farmers. As a result, excess profits are finally earned by countries that know how to use the prestige of the place of origin to create value." it took no effort to earn it.

Oxfam estimates that once Ethiopia acquires the trademark rights of these three places of origin, it will increase Ethiopia's revenue by US $88 million a year. However, Starbucks challenged the US Trademark Office because Starbucks first applied for Sidamo as a trademark as early as two ○○ four years ago, and although the case is still under review, the first applicant has the upper hand. The Ethiopian ambassador to the United States negotiated with Starbucks and received a response: "Please talk to our lawyer directly." However, in ○○ six years, the United States Trademark Office approved Ethiopia to own the trademark "Yega Xuefei", while the names of the two producing areas, Sidamo and Harald, are still under consideration. Starbucks hired a large team of lawyers to step up defense firepower in an attempt to prevent Ethiopia from taking control of trademarks in two other producing areas.

Getachew Mengistie, director of the Ethiopian Bureau of intellectual property, said: "the certification system proposed by Starbucks is not feasible because poor, illiterate coffee farmers do not have the power to implement additional document certification, and doing so will only increase unnecessary fees, and the price will not increase, which will not help farmers' income. The purpose of our application for trademark rights is to enable farmers to have a better income so that they can sleep on mattresses instead of on the ground, have at least one meal to eat every day, and have the ability to send their children to school. Do you have to suppress even this humble request? "on the one hand, the US media counted Starbucks down, and even criticized Starbucks as" a modern version of colonial hegemony, seizing the high-quality coffee passed down by Ethiopia for thousands of years. " Although the language went a little too far, under the strong pressure of public opinion, du Hei finally made a public apology and withdrew the statement that "Ethiopia's trademark application is illegal."