There is a HUGE difference between that and a coffee shop where drinks are prepared on demand and coffee beans are sold.

Xrlq: Was “Double Shot” an existing trademark, like “Burger King”? No.

I don’t see how that affects your theory. Either the simple presence or absence of a space between syllables can spell the difference between a valid trademark and a generic term, or it cannot. If it can, the game should work both ways.

It was a generic term.

Bingo. That’s game, set and match, right there.

And contra “Doubleshotcoffee.com” guy’s assertion (which seems to be based on no legal evidence), that doesn’t mean it can’t be a trademark, if it’s successfully used as one.

Where did you get that from? “Genericide” is a well-established doctrine of trademark law. If a term is generic, it can’t be registered as a trademark. Even terms that were once valid trademarks lose their trademark protection if they become generic, which is why owners of some of the more commonly used trademarks, such as Kleenex or Xerox, go out of their way to discourage generic use of their marks. “Aspirin” was once a valid, registered trademark in this country. It isn’t anymore, nor can it be (though it is in Germany).

To the extent you acknowledge that “double shot” is a generic phrase, it is Starbucks, not “doubleshot.com guy,” who has no case.

It was a generic term. And contra “Doubleshotcoffee.com” guy’s assertion (which seems to be based on no legal evidence), that doesn’t mean it can’t be a trademark, if it’s successfully used as one.

Which Starbucks quite effectively seems to have done.

My point was that “a double shot” being a generic term does not make “doubleshot” an impossible trademark. Not that doubleshot would be okay because it’s one word if “double shot” was itself a trademark.

The “customer confusion” test, which is evidently central to trademark law, would seem to bear this out. Certainl “Burgerking” would cause customer confusion.

And Starbucks has a plausible claim that a doubleshotcoffee.com and doubleshot coffee house are confusingly like their been-used-for-years trademark, Starbucks Doubleshot. (Especially when one counts that their website is “doubleshot.com”, not “starbucksdoubleshot.com”, and the can itself is most prominently “doubleshot”, not “Starbucks Doubleshot”.)

That was my point. Not that you could evade a real, existing trademark by changing two words into one.

But “doubleshot”, one word. A real no-shit trademark (by any normal definition of the word, and especially the legal one) that they’ve been using for years to identify a coffee product. (They registered “Starbucks Doubleshot”, but I suspect very strongly they have customer-confusion grounds for just Doubleshot.)

And now this guy names his coffee joint the same thing and complains, even though he knew damn well their product existed, that they don’t like him doing so?

“A double shot of espresso” is probably too generic to trademark (though I think legally there’s no actual prohibition, but who’d bother to use that as a trademark?) … but “doubleshot” – one word – isn’t commonly used.

I don’t see that he has a case, and he should have known better. Fortunately for him, Starbucks hasn’t actually filed any suit.