SOUTH KOREA BUCKS THE TREND

The Korean Times reports that Starbucks has lost a trade mark suit in South Korea. The Patent Court has ruled that Elpreya’s STARPREYA trade mark should not be cancelled. Both the Starbucks logo and Elpreya’s logo are circular, with a green border containing white writing and two stars. In Elpreya’s case, the writing reads STARPREYA instead of STARBUCKS. Both also contain a mythical-looking figure in their centres, though the Elpreya picture is more classic, while Starbucks’ is heavily stylised.

The court ruled that:

* the words looked different
* Star is commonly used in trade marks and so wasn’t distinctive
* Neither ‘preya’ nor ‘bucks’ had any special meaning, and so consumers would be unlikely to separate the trade marks into their constituent elements, referring to both sometimes as ‘Star’
*There was no evidence that Elpreya had ‘plagiarised’ Starbuck’s logo

The IPKat doesn’t find this particularly convincing. True, if you analyse each element of the two logos bit by bit it’s possible to highlight many differences between them, but our good friend the moron (or should that be commuter?) in a hurry will just take a quick glance and will be confronted with two logos of green rims containing white writing and a picture in the middle.