Starbucks backs down; DoubleShot keeps name

Six months after Brian Franklin's reply, Starbucks has backed off its threats of trademark litigation against Tulsa's DoubleShot Coffee Company:

I write to follow up on our prior communications concerning your client's use of the "Doubleshot" mark. It is Starbucks' understanding that your client uses this mark only as the name of his coffee shop and, specifically, not as the name of a prepared beverage or other ready-to-drink beverage. Based upon the foregoing, we will close our file on this matter.

(UPDATE 2021/09/30: Direct link to image of Starbucks letter. And a backup copy for safekeeping.)

As if Brian Franklin would ever serve a "ready-to-drink" beverage!

In fact, it appears that Franklin's quest for perfection has made it difficult to find baristas that meet his high standards, so he has cut hours to 7 am to 5 pm weekdays, 9 am to 3 pm weekends, and says he is working on increasing the wholesale and online retail side of the business. "If you buy a drink at my store," he said in an e-mail from last week, "it will have been sourced, roasted, blended, ground, and brewed by only me. No one knows my coffee better than I do."

Elsewhere on his blog, Franklin has an interesting take on a certain river development proposal:

Let's talk about the River for a minute. Economic development? That's what downtown is for. What? We've finally decided that buiding, constructing, changing, re-changing, re-zoning, re-positioning, re... we can't make downtown a viable economic center? So now we'll go try it on the River. I live on Riverside Drive. Down on the quiet part, where people slow down. I sit on my front porch and relax. I watch people jog by or ride their bikes or take a stroll. There are big, old trees and foxes at night. And sometimes I think about the "economic development" they want to start on the River. Is that improvement?...

But I imagine... they wouldn't cut down ALL the trees, just the ones that were in the way. We'd make parking lots and build an island (an island? I'm sorry, but that's retarded) so rich people could have their condos paid for by my tax dollars and we can move Utica Square out there in the middle of the Arkansas River. Maybe they'll make it a gated community. Or maybe because one group of jackasses can get taxpayer dollars to build their money-making project, someone else will decide they want an island too. And then we can just dam up the River altogether and make it into a waterpark. They'll build tall buildings where there used to be trees outside my window. And what we really need on the River is a Starbucks. This town won't even be put on the map until there's a Starbucks in the middle of the Arkansas River. Isn't that what they're talking about when they say "economic development?"

I have an idea. Let's let Jenks ruin the river. Tulsa can use downtown for businesses (what a novel idea) and keep the River for its natural resources.

As a fellow recipient of a "scary lawyer letter" (who has yet to see a retraction like the one linked above), I send hearty congratulations to Brian and DoubleShot Coffee Company.

UPDATE 2021/09/30: Internet Archive Wayback Machine used to fix dead links.

DoubleShot's ordeal inspired a feature-length documentary called The Perfect Cappuccino, available to rent on YouTube and Amazon Video.

15 years later, Tulsa Gathering Place, LLC, which manages the world-famous, billionaire-built Tulsa park, filed a federal trademark suit against a family-owned coffeehouse in Shawnee, Oklahoma, the Gathering Place Coffee Co.