The Colonel vs. Adolf Hitler In A Trademark Extravaganza
from the intellectual-property-reichs dept
We've had dust-ups in the restaurant industry over trademarks before. Whether it was Psy vs. Gangnam Style Restaurant, which turned out to be a nothing, Nutella vs. restaurants promoting their products, or Waffle House vs. rap music, the conflict is there, but I feel like it lacks a certain gravitas. A little of what the French call je ne sais quoi. The closest we've come to anything satisfying was IHOP vs. God, but I'm going to disqualify that one for being outside the mortal coil (side note: Heavenly Coil would be a great name for a punk band or strip club). Fortunately, we've finally got a trademark dispute with some real personalities. Two titans on the world stage that the cameras can do close-ups on as they battle this out.
I'm of course talking about the potential for a legal battle between Colonel Sanders and Adolf Hitler. Some brief background is probably in order. See, apparently there's something of a trend in Thailand for taking well-known cultural icons and changing their images just enough to represent history's most dasterdly megalomaniac. As a result, you'll get teletubbies with Hitler's face on them, or a cute little panda with a toothbrush mustache and a glare that says, "Those bamboo stalks better not be Jewish." And the latest victim of this Hitler-ization is of the KFC spokesman.
Kentucky Fried Chicken told The Huffington Post Friday it may take "legal action" against a fried chicken shop named Hitler that sports a storefront emblem very similar to KFC's, only with Adolf Hitler's head replacing Colonel Sanders.
"We find it extremely distasteful and are considering legal action since it is an infringement of our brand trademark and has nothing to do with us," a spokesman for KFC parent Yum! told The Huffington Post in an email.
Look, I can't blame KFC for being upset that their beloved Colonel Sanders was morphed into Hitler. Adolf Hitler murdered roughly 11 or 12 million people in one of the world's greatest travesties. The Colonel only kills chickens, people. Delicious, succulent, chickens. So if KFC wants to go the trans-oceanic trademark route, it may be hard to blame them, but how much of an effect would it actually have?
As it turns out, a mild-flavored recipe effect at best. In order to avoid criticism of the same kind a couple of years back, the restaurant changed its facade, name, and shop images a bit. Now, instead of being called Hitler's Chicken, the name has reportedly been changed to H-ler, because that's apparently better. Also, it looks as though the Hitler image has been removed. Not that this is erasing anyone's memory, of course. People pass that shop every day and know it was Hitler's Chicken. Nobody ever confused Hitler with Colonel Sanders and nobody ever actually thought less of KFC or their trademark because of the stunt.
You can understand why KFC was upset, but it's hard not to see the futulity in all this. KFC may not have realized at first that the images of a Hitler Colonel were a year or so old, but this can serve as a lesson in how the market and society will usually do all the legal work for you if you give them enough time and spotlights.
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Filed Under: colonel sanders, hitler, kfc, restaurants, thailand, trademark
Companies: yum brands
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...does thinking Thai Trend makes an excellent name for a Thai pop band make me a bad person?
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Well...not really
I believe that's a grossly inflated number - 6 million is the usual cited number, and even that is rumored to be somewhat falsified.
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The Nazi's weren't just about the death camps. There was also a lot of lebensraum related atrocities going on too.
The 12 million number is LOW estimate based on an American centric view of the war.
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I was astounded that a lower estimated was around 100 million civilians killed during that war. The upper bound was around 120 million civilians killed. What I hadn't realised was how densely populated Europe was at that time. Compared with the number of military killed - the estimate was under 1 million.
So six million Jews and 2-3 million Gypsy's are not unreasonable numbers.
If we have another global conflict which seems inevitable, we will probably see billions of civilians die, with most if not all the politicians surviving.
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Ya think?
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It's annoying because I see it more and more often abused, used as justification for compensation etc.
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On the other hand, the death camps were highly organized ethnic cleansing on an industrial scale. Furthermore, the Germans were really proud of it so they made their own home movies. The Nazi's themselves helped increase the visibility of what they were doing.
Bulldozers pushing a bunch of emaciated bodies into a mass gave makes a big impression. So does a liberated death camp.
Also, a lot of the abuses that are part of that bigger number happened behind the iron curtain. Americans and the rest of NATO during the cold war weren't going to highlight what the Nazis did to the Russians.
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Shame we can't get the politicians to do the warring for us.
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Even though I have to admit that it is possible that the name was spelled that way a long time ago* (and still is in english)
However that particular Adolf definitely wrote his name with an f
*before the first spelling reformation germans used different spelling possibilities of their names interchangeably, like Göthe Goethe
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and let's be careful to not offend such a historical hero.
Somehow, I don't care if it bothers him that his name gets mis-spelled.
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And, in other trademark news...
Silly me, I thought Jimmy also has the last name of Flynt!
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Anyway, I would mention that this thread is getting way too far from the original point, but I understand that the Hitler restaurant in question closed for good quite a while ago, and KFC is now in the awkward position of threatening to sue a picture on the Internet -- the only legacy of the Hitler restaurant -- because some Guardian journalists couldn't be bothered to fact-check the original story.
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No Soup For You !!!
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As long as I stayed away from the standard offerings (which I admit I didn't try at all), I thought the food was pretty good in such places. Better than you'd find, say, in a food court in the U.S.
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kfc
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