It is high time that the government in Addis and its Embassy here in the US must talk about the trademark issue openly to the public. Enough for the silence! The anti-poverty organizations’ innovative and sophisticated approach to eradicate poverty in Ethiopia is admirable. Utilizing the IP initiative for development will undoubtedly have a lasting positive impact on the coffee sector in Ethiopia. However, the coffee sector as we know it is composed of the poor farmers, a chain of rural merchants, middlemen, and exporters. The proportionate size of the revenue realized by those farmers, who travel bare foot for hours through ruthless situations only to end up selling their coffees to the roadside merchants at the nearby rural village, is at the bottom end of the coffee trade chain even at local standards. The farmers are exploited not only by the world’s giant coffee roasters but also by the greedy and merciless middlemen that do not have sympathy for the producers. Coffee farmers in E...