Starbucks vs Starbung in Bangkok

October 23, 2013 Leave a comment

Starbucks vs Starbung

starbungcks2

Tuesday, October 22, 2013 – 09:20

The New Paper

BANGKOK – On one side is a billion-dollar global coffee chain. On the other is a Bangkok street vendor, selling coffee from his cart. Starbucks, which had an annual net profit of US$1.38 billion (S$1.7 billion) last year, is suing Mr Damrong Maslae for 300,000 baht (S$12,000) for copying its famous green logo on his Starbung cart, the Bangkok Post reported. Mr Damrong sells coffee for 20-30 baht each in the Thai capital. Starbucks is also demanding a monthly payment of 30,000 baht plus legal fees, according to its Trademark Act violation complaint.The coffee chain filed a petition with the Central Intellectual Property and International Trade Court, seeking the arrest of Mr Damrong and his younger brother, Mr Damras, as well as financial compensation.

The court has set a trial date for Nov 4.

The company’s petition states that on Sept 18, it obtained a court injunction ordering the brothers to stop using the words “Starbung Coffee” and the green logo for their products, clothing and paper wrappers.

But the pair declined to follow the injunction, the company said.

It sent them a warning letter to the men on Oct 17 last year, which they ignored.

Since then, the brothers have expanded the use of their Starbung mark on stickers, paper wrappers and clothes.

The company sent another letter, but Mr Damrong instead demanded three million baht from Starbucks.

Explaining the request for the money, he said that if Starbucks wanted him to stop using the mark, he would sell his business to the company for that amount.

Starbucks said it had asked the Intellectual Property Department to bring Mr Damrong into the arbitration system but the proposal was rejected.

Mr Damrong said he had adjusted the design of his logo since he received the letter from Starbucks.

His logo now has a figure of a man inside the green circle, which also has a star, a crescent, and a halal symbol.

Mr Damrong, a father of six children, said he will fight the case but has no money to pay the compensation.

Starbucks operates nearly 21,000 coffee shops in 62 countries, including 171 stores in Thailand.

Filed under Life

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment