Secondly, the English language is there for us all to use. Okay I accept you can copyright "The New York Times" or "Love Heart" sweeties, "Ford Mustang" or even "KFC" but "family feast"? Come on! If that is acceptable then I hereby claim copyright over these four words - "Exit", "Entrance", "Push" and "Pull". However, I also hereby give permission for anybody in the world to freely use these words apart from the KFC corporation. These words must be removed from all KFC doorways. Failure to follow this instruction will invite strong legal action! Sometimes David bites back Goliath!
Tan Hill Inn - England's highest pub. Click on it to see their website.FRIDAY UPDATE. Given the growing ridicule, KFC have done the "decent" thing and knocked this issue on the head now. More likely they saw how their image was being tarnished by reports of their heavy-handed behaviour and wished to save face. Here's the ITN news report "...a spokeswoman for KFC GB Ltd has now stated that no further action will be taken against the pub.
She said: "KFC has to protect its trademarks against those who seek to trade off its brand. KFC has spoken to Ms Daly at the Tan Hill Inn and confirmed that it will not take this case any further.
The spokeswoman added: "This means that Ms Daly can continue to use the phrase 'Family Feast' on the pub's Christmas menu. It's an unusual situation that has been blown out of all proportion."
Ms Daly said: "They have very kindly said we can continue using the name. Common sense has prevailed. I'm very relieved and ecstatic." VERY KINDLY!? Hey get real landlady! They're finger-lickin thugs!
Quite right - good thoughts in your blog. This is total insanity.
ReplyDeleteI have no idea how KFC can advertise what they sell as food let alone "Family feast" - their TV advert makes it look like fried vomit.
Best of luck to Tan Hill Inn in it's fight against KF*C*.
Years ago they fell foul of the local planning authority. The pub was used in an Everest double-glazing advert on the telly but they didn't have the planning permission to change their windows - I'm not sure what happened about that.
ReplyDeleteAnyway I doubt they'll have a problem, I think KFC will have to prove that no one else has used the term before them - or something like that.
Quite right about the absurdity of trying to treat "family feast" as if it were a copyright issue. Sounds like a typical hamhanded bit of insanity from a major corporation.
ReplyDeleteBut...
KFC is rubbish? No. Not on this side of the pond at least, and not in the warmer and more drawly parts of the USA. I'll admit that at my age I can only actually digest one of their meals once a year, but as southern fried chicken (not an easy food to prepare, by the way) goes, they don't do a bad job of it. Not as good as the old BOJANGLES chain in Southern Louisiana, but good enough.
I had fried chicken in London once. My mother and I had been in Great Britain for two weeks and we spotted the place down the block. "Manhattan Fried Chicken" the sign over it said. We stopped, stared and after a moment my mother said, with the air of an anguished bystander outraged by an obvious act of chicanery, "Well SOMEBODY should go over the TELL them!"
We never actually got any details, but the whole sordid tale was writ large in the sign, in the murals of NYC drawn on the walls of the establishment, in the bland, uwieldy, soggy "fried" chicken halves leaving chicken-half-shaped grease stains on their waxed paper wrappings when, out of curiosity, we went in for lunch. Some Yankee sharpies had descended on an innocent Englishman and laved him with oily assurances about how New York City was well known throughout the states for its fried chicken.
I can just see the snickers over the poor man's head as, with a stolid naivete worthy of Graham Chapman, he signed off of the franchise. And now where was he? Left with an abomination guaranteed to spread ill-will towards American southern cooking throughout the British Isles. Dixie had been royally screwed by the damyankees again.
I'm sorry, but the experience left me with absolutely no confidence in an Englishman's ability to either deepfry and season chicken pieces or make a decent buttemilk biscuit. Scones yes. Cucumber sandwiches, Yorkshire Pudding, Kidney Pie, and fish and chips, yes. But American friend chicken? No. And I don't care how extensively KFC trains them. The miserably unsuthrun KFC I had in Pittsburgh PA has convinced me that some culinary skills just can't cross the Mason Dixon line, much less the Atlantic.
You've touched upon a subject about which I am passionate. I can't stand it when people claim copyrights for things they didn't themselves think up. Alan Lomax copyrighting Leadbelly's songs is one prime example.
ReplyDeleteI printed that story off from The Publican this morning and am going to write a piece on it (in the real world - not my blog!) tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteWe all ranted in the same vein a you at work earlier today.
Some years ago Victoria Beckham attempted via our honourable friends to get Peterborough United to stop using their nickname - Posh.
ReplyDeleteI kid you not.
Thankfully she lost the case.
A victory for common sense ...
ReplyDeletehttp://itn.co.uk/news/d7fd154f08245c9d6e805e72d5ae844c.html
I've been following this story as Tan Hill is not so far from me, head up to reeth, turn right and just keep going up hill for about 10 miles. It's quite an interesting place, bleak, featureless, diabolical weather, it used to be an entire mining village but the mine went and so did the village, just leaving the pub. How anyone can compare a cardboard box full of grease coated birdflu with yorkshire christmas dinner I don't know but it seems that KFC have reined in the lawyers to avoid an almighty own goal. Folk around here are not the best ones to choose if you're looking for a fight I can tell you.
ReplyDeleteThe whole "intelecctual property" scene has gone potty imho. I often look at the patent sites and am amazed that some of the stuff even gets patented, seems like you can cobble anything together today and either copyright it or patent it as long as you have a fat chequebook.
ReplyDeleteTHANK YOU DEAR VISITORS;-
ReplyDeleteJAMES - "insanity" - you're right mate.
ANDY - Given the high location I would have thought they needed Everest - especially as "Everest only fit the best!"
THE MOY - I am honoured you dropped by again. Sorry about your culinary experiences in England. To have English southern fried chicken try my house - I have my own special recipe but the best I ever had was at the famous Mrs Wilkes boarding house in Savannah, Georgia. Did you ever go there?
ALKELDA - Boo to Alan Lomax. Can't he write his own?
JJ - Perhaps Peterborough should change their name to Victoria - "Come on you Vickies!" Tee hee!
M&MEANDERINGS - Thanks for alerting me to the latest twist in the news.
ARTHUR - You're right about folk around here not being the best to pick a fight with because it is bloody hard to fight when you are pushing a walking frame or suffering from a debilitating mental condition caused by in-breeding!
ROB from EASTENDERS? - My cheque book is thin so I won't be patenting anything though I would like a microwave that cools things!
I like the way you put your view across Yorkshire Pudding, blunt and to the point !! Absurd that the issue arose in the first place
ReplyDeleteMany years ago, Burger King started using the slogan, "have it your way", when talking about custom ordering your burgers (fixin's, that is). Imagine if they told the world that no one could use that phrase...there'd be no more make-up sex at all. EVER!
ReplyDeleteFridaysweb. Mmmmm, never knew that was the phrase for initiating make up sex... no wonder I was divorced!
ReplyDeleteThick as a brick I am! :-(
Family feast??
ReplyDeletemmmmm soylent green!!
FoX