Goldilocks stops Chowking
Goldilocks has managed to stop fellow fast-food chain Chowking from serving its own version of a Chinesestyle “chicken orange” dish. Reason? Chowking, a subsidiary of the listed Jollibee Foods empire, has lost in its attempt to trademark its “Chowking new orange chicken” and its variant “Chowking orange chicken with Chinese characters and device” offering after the local trademark office ruled that Goldilocks had already secured the copyright to “Goldilocks chicken orange” name and mark in 2010.
Saying the phrase “chicken orange” is both generic and descriptive that refers to an old Chinese chicken dish cooked in dried orange or tangerine peel, the Intellectual Property Office last month ruled that it was imperative for Chowking to “disclaim” the phrase “orange chicken” in its trademark application. As defined by the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a disclaimer is a statement that the applicant includes in its application that the applicant does not claim exclusive rights to an un-registrable portion of the applied mark.
“A disclaimer does not physically remove the un-registrable portion from your mark or affect the appearance of your mark or the way you use it,” the US agency said.
“It is merely a statement that the disclaimed words or designs need to be freely available for other businesses to use in marketing comparable goods or services.”
A check with the Chowking website yesterday showed the contested chicken dish had already been removed from the menu.
Strangely, even the Goldilocks website no longer carries the same dish.
Chowking last year lost the first round of the six-year-long trademark battle, after the Jollibee subsidiary failed in its opposition to Goldilocks’ trademark application.
Goldilocks was represented in the litigation by Accra Law; Chowking, by Quisumbing Torres. After nearly two months of family-imposed restriction, a young billionaire heiress has re-opened to the public her Instagram account, with a photo of her gorgeous mestiza butt in bed still on the website, to the consternation of her patrician aunts and uncles.
Ongpin spins a bigger WEB
Phil Web chairman Roberto V. Ongpin has braved the still choppy gaming market by acquiring an additional 837,000 shares worth nearly P13 million.
According to regulatory disclosures, the Phil Web majority shareholder stuffed up on the company shares anywhere from P14.76 to P19.88, after the company-imposed week-long trading suspension of WEB shares was lifted on July 11.
WEB yesterday was trading from P16.10 to P16.60, still down from P24.40 close on June 30 when President Duterte told his first Cabinet meeting that he wanted online gambling to be stopped, sending WEB and other gaming stocks into a tailspin the following trading day.
According to new Pagcor chairman Andrea Domingo, Phil-Web’s gaming franchise, and presumably also those of others, is now being renewed monthly, until Malacañang comes up with a more definite pronouncement.
Money talks
• Chinabank chief financial officer Carlos Borromeo has resigned for “personal” reason effective today, after being offered the CFO-then-presidency of Universal Storefront Services Corp., the local money-remittance partner of Western Union.
• Universal Storefront, on the other hand, is the management-led company that bought out the branches of RCPI, the shuttered telegram company.
• Following Philamlife’s import of a British executive as chief agency officer, Philippine Axa Life Insurance Corp. has brought in a Frenchman, Claude Pierre Seigne, as its new chief general insurance officer.
• TDK Electronics Philippines, which manufactures and distributes magneto-resistive recording heads for computer hard disk drives from its Laguna factory, has a new chairman and president in the person of Nobumasa Fujimori.
Heard through the grapevine