Ethiopia's Coffee Trademarks: Harrar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe

Harrar, Sidamo and Yirgacheffe are among the best-known coffee names in the world, and for years Ethiopia saw little of the value they created. Its answer, from 2004, was unusual: rather than seek geographical indications, the government registered the three names as trademarks in its main markets and licensed them, free of charge, to roasters and importers. This page explains how the scheme worked, why it caused a public dispute with US coffee companies, and how it compares with the protection of Jamaica Blue Mountain.

The problem Ethiopia set out to solve

According to WIPO's account, coffee was providing about 60% of Ethiopia's export earnings, and an estimated 15 million people depended on it directly or indirectly. Yet Ethiopia received only around 5 to 10% of the retail price of its specialty coffee, with the rest captured further down the chain. WIPO gives the example of farmers receiving as little as US$1 a kilogram for coffee that retailed at US$20 to 28 a kilogram.

The three names were chosen because they already carried weight in the specialty market. Harrar is the dry-processed coffee of the eastern highlands; Sidamo, now usually spelled Sidama for the region, and Yirgacheffe, a district in the Gedeo zone, are best known for washed coffees with floral and citrus notes. Their prices abroad were among the highest for any Ethiopian coffee, which made the gap between retail value and the farm-gate price especially stark, and gave Ethiopia a reason to start with those three rather than with a national mark.

Why trademarks rather than geographical indications?

A geographical indication protects a place name for everyone who produces there to set rules, which usually requires a system to define boundaries and verify origin. WIPO reports that Ethiopia judged that impractical: its specialty coffee came from more than four million small plots farmed by an estimated 600,000 independent farmers in remote areas, with much of the trade informal. A trademark, owned by the state, gave the government direct control over who could use the names and on what terms. Our coffee geographical indications page compares the two approaches.

How the initiative worked

• Who ran it. The Ethiopian Coffee Trademarking and Licensing Initiative was launched in 2004, led by the Ethiopian Intellectual Property Office and run with a stakeholder committee of cooperatives, private exporters and government bodies. It had funding from the UK's Department for International Development, technical advice from the Washington-based NGO Light Years IP, and legal help from the US law firm Arnold and Porter.
• Which names. Harrar (Harar), Sidamo and Yirgacheffe.
• Where. Applications were filed in major markets. WIPO reports registrations in the European Union and Canada, certificates for Yirgacheffe and Sidamo in Japan, and applications in Australia, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa.
• Licensing. Licences were royalty-free. Licensees had to sell products made wholly from Ethiopian specialty coffee under the marks and promote Ethiopian fine coffee. By mid-2009 almost one hundred licence agreements had been signed with importers, roasters and distributors in North America, Europe, Japan and South Africa, and 47 private exporters and three cooperative unions had signed at home.

The dispute in the United States

The US registrations were contested. Yirgacheffe was registered first. The National Coffee Association, which represents US roasters, objected to the Harrar and Sidamo applications on the ground that the names had become generic, and the US Patent and Trademark Office refused Harrar in 2005 and Sidamo in 2006. The Ethiopian office filed rebuttals showing the names had acquired distinctiveness; WIPO reports that the Harar rebuttal succeeded and that a Sidamo trademark was granted in February 2008.

Starbucks was widely reported to have been a driving force behind the objection and offered instead to help Ethiopia set up certification marks. Ethiopian officials disagreed, and the dispute ended in an agreement under which Starbucks signed licence agreements acknowledging Ethiopia's ownership of the three names. The case became a widely cited example of a producing country using intellectual property to bargain with large buyers.

What did it achieve?

WIPO reports that Yirgacheffe farmers' income doubled in 2007 compared with 2006 and that producers could expect around US$6 to 8 a kilogram over time, and cites projections of much higher export earnings. Those are claims made for the initiative rather than independent evaluations, and coffee prices also rose for other reasons in the same period, so the effect of the trademarks alone is hard to isolate. The more durable result was a licensing network: by 2009 nearly a hundred foreign companies used the names under licence, and where the marks are registered, Ethiopia has a legal basis to act against misuse. Our guides to Yirgacheffe, Sidama and Harrar coffee describe the regions themselves.

How it compares with Jamaica Blue Mountain

Jamaica's system, set out on our JACRA certification page, starts from a legally mapped growing area and controls the trade inside Jamaica; Ethiopia's started from ownership of the names abroad. Both aim at the same thing: making sure the famous name on the bag actually pays the place it comes from. For the wider story of Ethiopian coffee, see our Ethiopian coffee guide.

Disclosure: this site is published by Mamre Blue Coffee, a Jamaica Blue Mountain estate (see about us), so we rely on official and independent sources for the facts on this page.