Starbucks sues over trademark infringement
(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-02-16 08:40

The US-based Starbucks, one of the world's largest coffee chains, is taking legal action to protect its Chinese name which is now allegedly being used by another coffee bar in Shanghai, according to the local court.

Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court accepted the trademark dispute lawsuit filed by Starbucks and will investigate before opening a court session, said the court's publicity office. A court date has not been set yet.

The Seattle-based Starbucks Corporation and Shanghai Xingbake Coffee Shop Ltd now share the same three-character name - xing, ba, ke - in Chinese pinyin.

In Chinese, xing means "star," ba and ke are a phonetic rendition of "bucks."

Neither of the two has registered "xingbake" as a Chinese trademark but "xingbake" has generally been accepted by the Chinese public as translation of Starbucks, which now has 109 chain outlets in Taiwan and nearly 100 on the Chinese mainland.

Starbucks filed a lawsuit on December 23 against Shanghai Xingbake for trademark infringement after failing to reach a settlement out of court.

"We are disappointed that we were not able to come to an amicable agreement regarding this issue," said Starbucks Asia-Pacific spokesperson Caroline Wong, based in Hong Kong.

But Shanghai Xingbake argued that it only uses "xingbake" as its enterprise name which was successfully registered with local authorities in March 2000. At the time, Starbucks had not even entered the Shanghai market yet.

"We never applied for any Chinese or English trademarks, so there is no trademark infringement at all," Mao Yibo, general manager of Shanghai Xingbake, told China Daily.

"What we are using is our legitimate company title, instead of a trademark," said Mao.

He denied Starbucks had formally contacted him to settle the name dispute before taking legal action.

And he further said that his two-store chain, opened with an initial investment from a Hong Kong company, does have plans to further expand.

"Our business is fairly good, we want to open more stores, in Shanghai at first," said Mao.

Chen Naiwei, director of the Intellectual Property Research Centre of Shanghai Jiaotong University, however, said Shanghai Xingbake's actions are not fair play.

According to Chen, "xingbake" has been used in Taiwan as the sole Chinese translation of Starbucks since 1998, two years before Shanghai Xingbake registered its enterprise name in Shanghai.