Chicken Licken's decision to sue a fast food competitor
called Big Jo's is interesting. The complaint was that Big
Jo's was using Hot Wings as the name of one of its menu items,
a term that Chicken Licken has used for many years, and one
that it has also registered as a trade mark. The KZN High
Court issued an interim interdict (injunction) requiring Big
Jo's to stop using the term.
You may be surprised to hear that the name of a menu item can be a
trade mark. Yet you only need to think of a menu item name like Big
Mac to realise that if it were to be used by another fast food
company people might wonder whether there was some connection with
McDonalds. A menu item name is, therefore, sometimes a
sub-brand of the restaurant or the fast food chain that uses it.
Hot Wings may not be the most distinctive name when it comes to
chicken wings, but a descriptive or otherwise weak name can
sometimes be protected through trade mark registration, or through
the common
