After Starbucks announced to suspend its business in Russia and withdraw from the Russian market last year, the founder of the local famous catering company Pinskiy & Co, Anton Pinsky, and the Russian rap singer Timati collaborated to acquire Starbucks’ assets in Russia (equipment and venues, excluding trademarks and recipes) for about 500 million rubles (approximately 6 million US dollars).
After the acquisition was completed, Timati once asked netizens for advice on social media to collect names and logo designs for the chain coffee shop, and in order not to make consumers feel unfamiliar, he once expressed the hope that the name and logo could maintain a similar style as before.
The final result of the makeover is indeed highly similar. “Starbucks” was renamed “Stats Coffee”, and the original iconic green logo’s mermaid was replaced with a girl wearing a traditional Russian headdress kokoshnik, with a strong Russian style as a whole.
After some adjustments, Stats Coffee reopened to receive Russian consumers. Although some netizens once questioned whether the highly similar Stats Coffee would cause infringement on Starbucks, for Russian consumers, they hoped that the coffee shop could provide good products and consumer experiences as before. Therefore, there has been a dispute over the trademark issue, but it has not had an impact on the business of the store.
However, recently, according to the report of the Russian International News Agency on the 17th, the subsequent owner of the Starbucks chain stores in Russia requested the court to terminate the legal protection of the trademark of this American company.
The report said that after the partnership to acquire Starbucks’ assets in Russia, the owner of Stats Coffee filed a claim with the Russian Intellectual Property Court on April 12 to request the court to terminate the legal protection of Starbucks’ trademarks, involving a total of seven trademarks of Starbucks, including the graphic and text elements registered in Russia from 2003 to 2014. At the same time, the plaintiff requested the court to terminate the protection of trademarks related to two types of services such as restaurants, cafes, buffets, and snack bars.
The reason for filing a claim with the court is that although Starbucks withdrew from the Russian market in 2022 and sold its assets, according to the records of the Russian court, the exclusive right to the Starbucks trademark in Russia has been extended to 2033.
After the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, the Russian court did not newly issue new laws or related details on the judgment standards such as trademark protection and trademark similarity in trademark review, which made Stats Coffee, which acquired Starbucks and highly imitated in terms of trademarks, a bit troublesome.
Previously, the owner of Stats Coffee once stated that there was a plan to expand the store after reopening, but if it wants to bloom everywhere, the trademarks currently used by Stats Coffee and the graphics and text that will need to be registered in the future all may have the risk of infringing on Starbucks, and even may face high compensation.
So before implementing the store expansion plan, the owner of Stats Coffee put forward the claim first in this way to reduce the trademark risk and take preventive measures.
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