Sometimes you can’t do your job without looking like a corporate tool.  That’s what Anessa Owen Kramer, a trademark lawyer for Starbucks, recently discovered when she sent a cease and desist letter to Jeff Britton, owner of the Exit 6 Pub and Brewery in Cottleville, Missouri. 

I was at the grocery store to pick up a bag of coffee last week, only to be deeply disheartened by what I saw. Let’s start with a disclosure; at my last job I worked on the Starbucks and Seattle’s Best Coffee accounts as a copywriter, particularly in the grocery channel.  I loved working on […]

It’s fun to bash Starbucks as a symbol of yuppiedom and paying too much for something that you can get for less down the street, but there’s little denying that they put gourmet coffee on the map in America. Look no further than the grocery store, typically the last place that latches onto a trend. […]

Poor Wrecks Bell. As he puts it, he was “just a small time business man, trying to make a bock.” A bock beer that is. And being from the Lone Star State of Texas, he decided to call that beer Star Bock. Where’s the harm in that? According to the U.S. Trademark Office, there was […]