Starbucks and Ethiopia Make Bad Blend

ROME, Oct. 26, 2006 — -- Every morning, millions of Americans taste one of life's simple pleasures -- coffee.

It is hard to imagine the high-rolling world of global economics spilling into that morning cup of your favorite blend.

But there is a potentially titanic trademark battle brewing between multinational giant Starbucks and Ethiopia, the home of coffee, and an impoverished nation on the horn of Africa.

The Ethiopian government filed for copyright last year to trademark its coffees. Names like Harar and Sidamo are familiar to Starbucks clients around the world.

Securing trademark rights to those names would mean a spectacular rise in Ethiopia's coffee revenues -- a jump in the neighborhood of $88 million.

The most critical dividend would go to Ethiopia's struggling coffee farmers -- 15 million people, many of whom live on less than a dollar a day.

But the Ethiopian government and Oxfam, a Britain-based nongovernmental organization helping Ethiopian farmers reap some of the rewards of the multibillion-dollar global industry, say Starbucks is trying to block Ethiopia's attempts to register its famous coffees.

"Starbucks is using its influence on the National Coffee Association to block this application in the U.S.," said Gwenllian Griffiths at Oxfam's London office.

Griffiths says the "official" objection to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office came from the coffee association, but she says Oxfam has proof that Starbucks is behind the action.

"We have three people willing to go on record who held meetings with the NCA who said it was Starbucks who brought Ethiopia's application to the NCA's attention," she said.

Starbucks maintains it has never filed an opposition to the Ethiopian government's trademark application.

However, Jo Sorenson, a representative at one of Starbucks overseas offices, indicated that Starbucks believed Ethiopia's approach was ill-advised.

"According to the National Coffee Association of America, the trademark application is not based upon sound economic advice and that the proposal as it stands would hurt Ethiopian coffee farmers economically," Sorenson said.