10:37 PM CDT on Thursday, June 3, 2004

Associated Press

Mediation in the trademark battle between Starbucks Corp. and a Galveston bar owner who sells "Starbock" beer likely will begin soon, an attorney for the bar owner said Thursday.

U.S. Judge Samuel Kent ordered the parties to mediate the case and set it for trial in 2005. Kent wants a report by July 30 on efforts to settle the case.

"That is the next step in the long process of getting through this agonizing ordeal," said John Egbert, the Houston attorney who represents bar owner, Rex Bell.

Bell operates the Old Quarter Acoustic Cafe, which holds about 60 people. He sells the beer from one of bar's taps.

"That is pretty much all he does with it," Egbert said of the beer Bell has sold for about a year. Egbert told The Galveston Daily News in Thursday's editions that Bell obtained U.S. Trademark Office approval for his beer's name.

Bell came up with the name after he combined Lone Star beer and Shiner Bock beer into a glass for a customer, suggesting he try a "Starbock." Egbert said Bell's beer is brewed in Texas and is the result of a "special recipe."

"The name just stuck in my head, and I knew I was on to something," Bell told the newspaper.

Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee retailer, claims Bell's beer has infringed on its brand. Starbucks appealed the trademark office ruling in February.

A month later, Egbert filed a complaint in federal court, pushing the coffee company to prove its case in court.

Starbucks filed a counterclaim alleging Bell chose the beer name "which he knew would be associated by consumers with Starbucks and its products."

"Unless Starbucks is willing to let (Bell) keep the name, I really don't see where we would go from there," Egbert told the newspaper.

Starbucks spokesman Matthew Mors said the company asked Bell to change his proposed trademark and would have preferred to settle the dispute "informally and amicably."

"Even where it may seem playful, this type of misappropriation of our name and reputation is both derivative and dilutive of our trademark rights," the company said in a statement.