Lots of money, apparently. The government of Ethiopia, with the help of non-profit, anti-poverty group Oxfam, is interested in removing some of the “bucks” from Starbucks, and funneling them back to the coffee growers to whom, it insists, they
rightfully belong. The source of the disputed dollars? In the good names of the premium coffee beans Ethiopia grows, and Starbucks sells.
Names like Harar, and Sidamo. These are the coffee beans that Starbucks uses in its “Black Apron” specialty brews, or sells for grinding at up to $26 a pound–after buying them, in 2005, for an average of $1.23.
Ethiopia wanted to trademark the names, and applied with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to do so. Ethiopia argues that if it can protect the coffee bean names as intellectual property–like MicroSoft software is protected–it will have much more of a say in how the beans are marketed, making sure they are sold only to nice people in nice places, and branding them into coffee the world must have–and be willing to pay an extra $88 million each year to get.
Ethiopia applied for a trademark on the “Sidamo” name in March, 2005, apparently unaware that Starbucks had beaten them to the punch in June 2004 by seeking trademark status for the coffee name “Shirkina Sundried Sidamo”–Shirkina, ironically, being the Ethiopian word for “partnership“.
Starbucks’ earlier application would have given them the rights to the name Sidamo, but they abandoned their trademark application in June.
They did not go quietly, however. The U.S. National Coffee Council, at Starbucks’ urging, objected to the Ethiopian trademark application. It worked. The USPTO denied Ethiopia’s request, using an argument borrowed from the NCA that the names of the beans were “generic”.
Oxfam has leapt into the fray at Ethiopia’s side, generating a media campaign designed to paint Starbucks as the mighty coffee grinder crushing Ethiopia’s farmers like so many beans. And their campaign bore fruit on Nov. 28, 2006, when Starbucks CEO Jim Donald met with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
One assumes beans were on the table.
