Adapting to COVID-19

Hello my name is Shelagh Carnegie and I'm a partner at Gowing WLG, I practice primarily in the trademark field and today I have the pleasure of speaking with Batur Oktay who heads up the Intellectual Property legal team at Starbucks coffee company we are going to have a short conversation about the impact of the coronavirus on Starbucks and their intellectual property team and how people like myself can help ease some of the burdens during these trying times welcome Batur and thank you for speaking with me today thank you Shelagh it's a pleasure to talk to you from a tiny room at the back of my house uh i'm at my dining room table so i'm not sure who's at a worse position there you go Batur I think that Starbucks counts as an essential service for most of the people that I know how has the coronavirus impacted Starbucks and have there been any surprises well as with so many businesses COVID has of course had an impact on Starbucks we've had to close many of our stores globally but we found ways to stay relevant to our communities for example we've donated three million dollars for COVID related relief efforts around the world providing free coffee to frontline responders sending them care packages and I've already made I think a $500,000 donation to those responders and then for the our partners which is what we call employees at Starbucks the company has risen to help as I've seen it do many times before in times of need because of course around the world many partners and their families have been impacted by hardship or urgent need and so one of the things Starbucks has done is established a 10 million relief program for partners impacted by COVID and extend its pay benefits I know I probably sound like a commercial for Starbucks I would have been here for over 18 years and I've seen the company step up like this you know over and over again it's it's one of the reasons I stay for customers thankfully and you may have seen this in where you are in canada we have drive-through stores and delivery open so that customers can continue to get their coffee and pastries and I heard about one drive-through line on the east coast that had dozens and dozens of cars in it just I guess good and then now we're looking at and we announced last week that we're looking at opening stores safely in June and a location by location method by using things like contactless handoff oh you guys are always so innovative I think that's incredible I love how you step up for your communities it makes me feel really good about the extra latte I plan on buying every single day as soon as I can get back into a Starbucks I'm not surprised to hear about the lineups um turning closer to home how have you and your legal team dealt with the new pressures of coronavirus is there anything that's worked really well or anything that you would change if you could well our team was already well poised to shift to a remote working arrangement and because we're global our practice is global part of our team is based in China we're already adept at teleconferencing holding meetings from our homes different hours you know to adjust to other time zones the only real difference now is that we're all working in our pajamas I'm kidding I'm kidding we try to connect with regular video chats check-ins messages to maintain team spirit yeah yeah that's great I think everybody's trying to do more of that I know for myself I've probably been in touch with people that I haven't talked to personally in months just because it makes it so easy and it makes sense during this time um how can we though as your outside counsel help facilitate any anything on your end is there anything we can be doing to support you during this time you are the team uh well I have to say our outside counsel have they've all been affected just as we have and my heart goes out to their them and their families who've been impacted um but as with our IP team at Starbucks our outside council have global practices many were already used to working from home at different hours so I'd say the work has really continued fluidly um but I haven't seen many of my outside counsel using video conferencing I think it's a missed opportunity because we're you know we're all in this together it's a way to connect on a more personal level and by folks you can see the individual with whom you're speaking and you can see where they live which is always fun well going back to the pajamas it's also a dangerous proposition to look into anybody's home uh you'll note we're not on video call right now that's right you just have to look professional from the waist step that's right if we were you'd see clarinet lessons in the background and a ten-year-old making it her fourth jam sandwich of the day um well Batur I have to say thank you so much for joining us today uh you're one of the very first participants in our new Go XL online platform and I couldn't think of anyone who I'd rather have introduced this platform to the world so thanks again um your insights have been really valuable and do please keep those coffee roasters running we need it uh it's my pleasure I don't know that you want the lawyers handling the roasters but I'll pass your message on thanks bye bye.