Starbucks wins some, loses some
 A Chinese court has decided that coffee chain Xingbake must change its name because it’s too similar to “Starbucks.” Apparently, Xing means “star,” and bake sounds a bit too much like “bucks.” But in New Hampshire, a judge has ruled that a small company that sells a dark coffee blend called Charbucks has not harmed the coffee giant. The judge wrote that the packaging “is different in imagery, color and format from Starbucks’ logo and signage” and that there was no evidence that the company “advertises by radio or uses Charbucks as a stand-alone word in promoting or offering its product.”
—Posted by Tim Nudd
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January 3, 2006 | Permalink
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Comments
The problem is the “Star” in Starbucks does not mean “star” but rather it was from the classic American novel Moby Dick. Yes, “Bake” (巴克) in Chinese sounds close to “Bucks”, but there are hundreds more Chinese character pairs would sound close or even closer to the word Bucks. The key should not be about the words or characters, the sound, or even the logos, but rather simply who came first! (http://nsigma.info/wp/index.php?cat=915)
Posted by: starrbucks | Jan 7, 2006 9:24:20 PM
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