{"id":1096,"date":"2007-11-12T13:30:49","date_gmt":"2007-11-12T18:30:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sequence-inc.com\/fraudfiles\/2007\/11\/12\/starbucks-thinks-they-own-the-green-circle\/"},"modified":"2008-06-01T10:52:58","modified_gmt":"2008-06-01T16:52:58","slug":"starbucks-thinks-they-own-the-green-circle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/starbucks-thinks-they-own-the-green-circle\/","title":{"rendered":"Starbucks thinks they own the green circle"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m generally a fan of Starbucks. They have overpriced coffee and it’s not my favorite, but it is convenient and they have built a fantastic business operation that I admire in many ways.<\/p>\n

But this is just silly. According to Consumerist<\/a>, Starbucks is suing a Michigan coffee shop called Conga for trademark infringement, and it’s all about the green circle. Conga has reportedly been using their logo for 11 years, but Starbucks just decided that it’s confusing and infringing.<\/p>\n

Now I’m sorry, but that green circle Starbucks uses as part of its logo is pretty generic. The real part of their logo that is distinctive is the woman in the center. Conga hasn’t even copied anything about the logo – not the font, not the stars, not the image in the center.<\/p>\n

But somehow the suits at Starbucks are convinced that people visiting Conga in Michigan might be confused and might think they’re walking into a Starbucks. Give me a break!<\/p>\n

Compare the logos:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sorry. I’m all in favor of protecting corporate intellectual property and identities and such, but Starbucks has this one all wrong. I sure hope that when they realize it, they’re kind enough to pay the legal fees of Conga for such a silly claim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m generally a fan of Starbucks. They have overpriced coffee and it’s not my favorite, but it is convenient and they have built a fantastic business operation that I admire in many ways. But this is just silly. According to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fraud-news-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Z0e-hG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1096\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sequenceinc.com\/fraudfiles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}