I have heard from a lot of students about “Dumb Starbucks,” and how the heck it is legal. In case you haven’t heard, some mystery person or group of persons opened a coffee shop in Los Feliz, California, and everything about it is identical to Starbucks, except the word “Dumb” appears everywhere. The FAQs sheet they are handing out at Dumb Starbucks says,
“We are simply using their name and logo for marketing purposes. By adding the word ‘dumb’ we are technically ‘making fun’ of Starbucks, which allows us to use their trademarks under a law known as ‘fair use.’”
In other words, they are claiming to be a parody, and thus protected under fair use.
I don’t buy it, and either will Starbucks’ lawyers. Fair use requires a transformative use of the protected material. More leeway is given to parodies, because you can only transform something so much if you want to make fun of it. But remember the four factors for fair use: 1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
As for the purpose of the use, although not entirely clear, the Dumb Starbucks is making money (i.e. selling the coffee instead of giving it away), and as far as I can tell there is no social commentary purpose. The amount of the protected material used is significant — the store is identical to a regular Starbucks. Although this one store would not really make a dent in the potential market for Starbucks, its existence is causing confusion.
As another example, do any of you remember Cabbage Patch Kids? Well, the company that made Cabbage Patch Kids dolls got into a court battle with Topps, a company who was selling trading cards under the name “Garbage Pail Kids.” Basically, these cards had images and names similar to Cabbage Patch Kids, but they were all gross and strange rather than cute. When Garbage Pail Kids was sued, they too claimed that the cards were merely a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids, and thus protected under fair use. The Court disagreed, holding that there was a violation of copyright and trademark law because they were selling the cards to make money, not to make social comment. (Original Appalachian Artworks v. Topps Chewing Gum). As far as I can tell, Dumb Starbucks is the same as Garbage Pail Kids — it is simply an effort to make money by making fun of Starbucks. Calling them “Dumb” cannot count as social comment, in my opinion.
6 Comments
Michaela Ragaisis posted on February 12, 2014 at 9:58 am
“Dumb” Starbucks wil definitely be in court soon against the real Starbucks or be shut down before then. I think idea of Dumb Starbucks is dumb itself. A parody is fair use, but there’s no point to this parody. I feel like Dumb Starbucks is for hipsters against mainstream Starbucks.
Definitely a weird story.
Chen Shi posted on February 16, 2014 at 1:26 pm
Somehow I find “Dumb Starbucks” smart. It creates a face to face competition with real Starbucks without actually competing against Starbucks. It definitely has some creative marketing people behind the scene. All about marketing is to let people talk about their products or stores and they have done a good job. However, I am wondering what if “Dumb Starbucks” is not an identical store as to a real Starbucks? What if it does not sell coffee? What if it is a toy store? Will it make a difference for it being held illegal?
TClaes Johnson posted on February 16, 2014 at 4:18 pm
I find it amusing that the creators thought it would be funny to create this store and believe they had smartly navigated the legal system to do so. After looking at it, its obvious that dumb more correctly applies to their legal team.
Arielle Assayag posted on February 23, 2014 at 10:46 am
If you’re copying an entire work, it’s not fair use. It seems that Dumb Starbucks made no effort to differentiate themselves and should not get away with this legally because they placed dumb in front of every trademark. Starbucks invested millions of dollars into their marketing campaigns, branding imagery, and cafe atmospheres. For dumb Starbucks to simply leach off them and avoid doing any marketing or research on their own seems unfair.
It will be interesting to see how this company’s story plays out.
Jingzhen Zhang posted on April 14, 2014 at 11:10 am
I think “Dumb Starbucks” is trying to play smart by making money from parodying a successful coffee company. In other countries where copyright protection is not well developed, a lot of brands were parodied and actually make money out of it. According to what I’ve learned about US law, this is definitely causing trouble and “Dumb Starbucks” will eventually be held in court or settled with Starbucks.
CoffeeMakersExpert posted on October 16, 2021 at 9:54 am
In the end no one can replace the original. Whether it is Dumb Starbucks or some other Dumbest one, the copycats are going to keep on copying the main brand.