Nestlé pressures small Seattle business to drop trademark name
Nestlé pressures small Seattle business to drop trademark name
Nestlé wants Seattle Strong Coffee Company to drop its trademark name, claiming it's too similar to Seattle's Best Coffee.
SEATTLE - A legal battle is brewing between a small, locally-owned coffee company and a massive multinational business.
Nestlé is pressuring Seattle Strong Coffee Company to drop its trademark name.
"We're true Seattle coffee," said Evan Oeflein, Founder of Seattle Strong Coffee Company. "We're roasted in Seattle. We're brewed in Seattle. Everything is actually done in Seattle."
Oeflein founded Seattle Strong Coffee Company for a class project at the University of Washington back in 2017 and estimates his product is now in 350 grocery stores across the Pacific Northwest, as well as in Los Angeles and Texas.
The backstory:
Nestlé purchased Seattle's Best Coffee from Starbucks in 2022 and this April, filed a petition to cancel the Seattle Strong trademark name, claiming it is too similar to Seattle's Best Coffee.
"The United States Patent and Trademark Office says we earned 'Seattle Strong' and we want to keep it," said Oeflein.
Filings show Seattle Strong responded to Nestlé, saying the petition is "an ill-fated effort by a large multinational company to control the use of the name of the city ‘Seattle’ in coffee-related products in an attempt to bully a small, local coffee company from Seattle."
"I think they want to crush us before we can get in there and really compete with them," said Oeflein.
Nestlé owns more than 2,000 brands around the world and rakes in billions of dollars in profit, which is why Oeflein started a GoFundMe to help with legal expenses.
"I think there's a great opportunity to support kind of a David vs Goliath story here," said Oeflein.
Nestlé has not responded to Fox 13's request for comment.
"We're going to stand strong, but we definitely would appreciate the support of Seattle," said Oeflein.
Oeflein is trying to raise $10,000, and donations can be made online.
The Source: Information in this story came from Seattle Strong Coffee Company, GoFundMe and FOX 13 Seattle reporting.
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