In 2014, 72andSunny, an advertising agency, contacted Maya Hayuk, a visual artist, to commission a work for a Starbucks campaign promoting its Frappucino drink. Hayuk declined the offer, and 72andSunny and Starbucks Corporation (together, the "Starbucks defendants") executed the campaign without her participation. In 2015, Hayuk brought this suit, alleging that the Starbucks defendants had infringed her copyright by producing artwork for the campaign that was substantially similar to five of her paintings produced from 2009 to 2011.

At trial, Hayuk did not claim that the Starbucks defendants’ work for the campaign exactly copied her work, but instead argued that the campaign artwork was substantially similar to her works’ “look and feel.” However, the district court concluded that “none of the Frappucino Works is substantially similar to the ‘total concept and feel’ of the protectible elements [such as original expressions of ideas] of any of the Hayuk Works.” While the court acknowledged that both sets of works shared similarities in their use of color and geometry, the district court emphasized that “such elements fall into the unprotectable category of ‘raw materials’ or ideas in the public domain.” Therefore, the court granted the Starbucks defendants’ motion to dismiss, holding that “no reasonable jury, properly instructed, could find the works substantially similar.”

In reaching this decision, the district court also criticized Hayuk’s attempts to heighten the similarity between her works and the Starbucks defendants’ by rotating and cropping her work. Such efforts, the district court pointed out, are frowned upon and go against Hayuk’s own claim that the Starbucks defendants’ work infringed “the total concept and feel” of her work rather than its individual elements.

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