It hasn't been a great year for Starbucks.

Last month, there were the revelations of the memo from chairman Howard Schultz suggesting the global coffee giant had lost its mojo.

We've also seen the company brawling with Ethiopian coffee growers, detailed in my blog entry here, over global coffee prices and how much it's actually paying them for those beans.

Now we have reports that it's trying to stop an entrepreneur, Shanhaz Husain, from opening a rival chain called Starstrucks in India, effectively beating the coffee company to the punch.

Starbucks, which hopes to open its first joint venture in India this year as part of a joint venture, has complained the name is similar to its own. But the entrepreneur says her concept is totally different. The name is just coincidental, of course.

An Indian lawyer friend tells me Starbucks doesn't have a hope in hell if the name has already been registered because rights would go to the first company that uses it.