«

»

pouring a cup of mellow


Last updated May 29, 2008 4:42 p.m. PT

Logo Dispute: A whip forward

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Starbucks has comfortable, even cozy coffee houses. But was that a very sharp corporate elbow the globally grown giant threw at our local roller derby league?

Not quite a flying elbow, says Quinn Heraty, the New York attorney representing the Rat City Rollergirls. But for a time it looked like Starbucks was getting ready to send the women sprawling.

Starbucks received a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office extension to file in opposition to Rat City’s cool, black eye and attitude logo. As the Seattle P-I reported last week, Starbucks seemed to sense infringement on its logo from, well, the fact that both use concentric circles. Hmm, and there’s a woman and two stars in both logos?

This struck us and a lot of readers as somewhere between crazy and overboard. Fortunately, Starbucks seems to be pouring a cup of mellow.

Heraty said Thursday, “All of my interactions with Starbucks have been good and friendly.” Starbucks spokeswoman Stacey Krum said the company shares Heraty’s positive feelings about progress in their discussions. She said corporate help in making slight design modifications might be a possibility.

Heraty said she hopes to “resolve this matter soon to everyone’s mutual benefit in a collaborative fashion.” Maybe the two colorful Seattle institutions can support each other with a point-scoring whip forward.



posted on Thursday, May 29th, 2008 at 10:31 pm and is filed under WFTDA, rat city rollergirls, roller-derby, starbucks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

contribute to the discussion

you must be logged in to post a comment.

Archive Category