Grilled Or Fried? And What About The Brand?

IPKat:

For those of you who like to consider how trademarks play out in the broader socio-legal context, there is nothing better than a dispute between a franchisor and its franchisees. I acknowledge that a franchise also involves some combination of copyright, trade secrets (maybe even patents) as well as contract law and a smattering of competition law. But whatever the legal admixture of these additional elements, at the end of the day, a franchise dispute will invariably involve, directly or indirectly, the mark under which the franchised goods or services are sold and operated.

Once we go beyond the obvious mention of McDonald’s, there is perhaps no more iconic franchise operation than KFC (“Kentucky Fried Chicken”). The image of Colonel Sanders, dressed in white, must certainly be one of the best-known instances where a founder has successfully fused his persona with the identification of his franchise operation (after all, how many of you could identify a picture of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc?). Disputes involving the KFC franchise therefore usually attract particular attention.

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