Cartoon stick figure laying down, holding two coffee cups having Starbucks logos, and pouring one of the coffee cups into his mouth — representing a blog post about the Starbucks Cup trade dress.

Trademark: Starbucks Cup Trade Dress

First Used: February 1990

First Registered: November 2006

Current Owner: STARBUCKS CORPORATION [1]

Trademark Type: non-traditional trademark; trade dress; position mark

Primarily Associated With: coffee-based beverages

Brief (and likely incomplete) History [2]:

Continuing our PSL® (brand coffee) and fall weather fueled posts on Starbucks’ trademarks, today we are highlighting the Starbucks Cup trade dress (post 3/5!).

Starbucks has built a strong brand identity over the years. Nowadays, all it takes is one glance at a white cup with a green logo and you instantly know the brand of coffee you are drinking. The Starbucks cup and logo has changed over the years. The early cups were relatively simple, with the original brown Starbucks logo featuring a twin-tailed siren. The simplicity of the design was reflective of the company’s small-scale operations at the time.

As Starbucks grew and expanded, the company introduced the now famous green version of its siren logo. The cup design evolved along with the logo, and the circular green logo with STARBUCKS COFFEE centered around the siren logo was introduced on its cup designs in early 1990. Over the next 20 years, the cup design continued to simplify. Today, the modern trade dress of the Starbucks cup include the classic white cup, the green siren logo, and occasionally a cardboard sleeve.

Interested in more PSL-fueled Starbucks posts? Check out our PSL, DOUBLESHOT, Frappuccino, and Venti.