Have A Family Feast Tonight... And It Doesn't Have To Be From KFC
from the bad-trademark,-bad dept
Jimmy alerts us to yet another story of trademark law gone bad. Fast food chicken joint KFC apparently was able to get a trademark on "Family Feast" and then threatened a small pizzeria in Scotland that had been using the phrase "Family Feast" since 1992. After getting the threat letter from KFC, the pizzeria responded with a straightforward letter to KFC, saying:"we refuse to be bullied by a global conglomerate such as yourselves".And... amazingly, it worked. KFC backed down and told the pizza place that it will take no further action. So, everyone, go out and have a family feast tonight from someone other than KFC.
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Filed Under: family feast, trademark
Companies: kfc
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Best guess
Or to put another way, the left hand found out what the right hand was doing.
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KFC
No they simply wanted to limit the amount of people taking advantage of the offer by making them get ONE "rain check" at some future date that you could only recieve at your home address.
I took four kids with coupons to three KFC's in the span of 1 hour, amazingly enough all three seem to have all run out of chicken? How the hell does that happen?
Think I'll get five rain checks? Not counting on it in this lifetime. Visiting KFC again? Again, not counting on it in this lifetime!
Now they try to muscule out some small business who used the term "Family Feast" way before they trademarked it. This is such a badly run company that it makes you wonder about their quality standards applied to the food they serve!
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Re:
It's both, innit?
Bad on KFC for their overreaching, but good on them for stepping back from that edge. I may go get a 'frak pack' tonight.
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Reminds me of a remark in a story I just read
the lawyer for the defense remarks that the whole mess had happened because nobody with any sanity found out about what was going on in time to prevent it.
Sounds like the guy or girl at KFC who holds the company sanity token finally found out what was going on.
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It's not about trademark or prior art...
Shame on the system that granted this mark.
While I in no way associate the phrase "Family Feast" with KFC, I certainly do associate the phrase "Corporation Run by Idiots" with it. Trademark that, KFC.
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KFC is the worst thing anyone could possibly eat
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Re: Re:
Well, the thing is that every word has prior use and probably almost every useful two sets of words. So should we just make every word copyright? It's ridiculous. If a company uses a word to communicate what it's serving and another company needs to use the same word to communicate what it serves is the first company the only one allowed to use that word? Is no one else allowed to use the word? This paragraph is made of words that were used before, am I breaking copyright law?
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Goes to show
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Re: Re: Re:
Without prior use, there would be no story here, because the pizza place would have had to stop using the term.
I can't figure out why Mike would say something like "amazingly, it worked", considering that prior use here is a pretty clear and well detailed.
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Trademarks, Patent Trolls. . .
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Re: KFC
Gee, you're dumb.
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Maybe
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The Masnick Effect strikes again.
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Re:
And could you point to a single example of that in practice? No? Oh look, you've been caught lying again. I'm beginning to think your troll MO is to simply lie as much as possible. What a pathetic life.
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Coupons
Call back and ask if they take the coupon.
Get the name of the people you talk to.
Show up and pick up your order using the coupon.
PepsiCo owns KFC, Pizza Hut and ?
Going out of your way to call someone a dumb ass shows a certain amount of personal inanity.
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