Dumb Starbucks!!

In Los Angeles, new pop-up coffee shop opened, and it looks nearly identical  to an usual Starbucks, 

but actually it is not. It is a 'DUMB' Starbucks. 

They parodied Starbucks, logo and trademark of Dumb Starbucks look exactly same with those of Starbucks, only difference is 'DUMB' is prefixed to the title and all menu items. 

For instance; Dumb Iced Vanilla Latte, Dumb Blonde Roast and seasonal Wuppy Duppy Latte. 

'Dumb' is added not only to menus,  for full effect, there are music discs named like 'Dumb Jazz Standards', 'Dumb Taste of Cuba', and etc. 

People were waiting in the queue for hours to get a free coffee, and lines extended out the door as you can see from the above photo. And word of this peculiar coffee shop spread quickly on the SNS. 

It turns out that the person who planned this coffee shop was a american comedian, 'Nathan Fielder', 

who declared that this was to criticize greediness of Starbucks. 

According to the US law, when purpose of the parody is for fair criticism, 

parody can use trademark or logo without the permission of the right holder. 

Nathan  Fielder claimed that Dumb Starbucks is not a violation of intellectual property law, and it satisfied all conditions to be acknowledged as a parody,so no legitimacy problem exists in that.

However,  some people criticized that this is just an another marketing fuss 

intended to attract people's attention. And Starbucks seems quite flustered by this situation,

they stated that this has nothing to do with Starbucks, and even though parody is acceptable, 

but using Starbucks log and trademark without permission is unacceptable, 

warned legal action against Dumb Starbucks.

Legitimate parody VS. illegal trademark infringement, opinions differs among consumers.

At the end, health authorities ordered close down to Dumb Starbucks, but Nathan Fielder, representative of Dumb Starbucks disclosed that Dumb Starbucks will open its 2nd shop in New York, Brooklyn soon.

While the boundaries between parody and trademark violation became vague, 

how Dumb Starbucks will continue its parody, and how Starbucks will react to this, 

whole situation is being watched with keen interest of many people.