In response to Nicola’s post titled ‘Identity Theft’, I would like to offer another point of view.

The Toronto Sun article she analysed detailed the lawsuit between coffee giant Starbucks and Black Bear Micro Roastery over the use of “Charbucks” to describe blends of the small business’s coffee. Starbucks lost their lawsuit against Black Bear over alleged copyright infringement.

While Nicola argues that this is example of stealing Starbuck’s brand name and that the court acted wrongly, I have another understanding.

Intellectual property is the exclusive rights to ideas and creations from the mind. However, can we always claim that our ideas are entirely our own? For example, if I create a new type of alpine skis, didn’t I borrow from the pre-existing concept of skis?

Starbucks claims that Black Bear stole their ideas and violated their intellectual property rights. However, they neglect on where their own name came from. ‘Starbucks’ refers to the first-mate on the Pequod, the ship, in the novel Moby-Dick. If Starbucks can try to destroy a small coffee company that has ‘destroyed its image’, why can’t the family of Moby-Dick author Herman Melville be able to sue for intellectual rights over the Starbucks name?