Mang Inasal fails to stop Ma’am Inasal from cracking business
Mang Inasal founder Edgar Sia II has failed to stop the trademark registration of Ma’am Inasal crackers despite the latter allegedly copying the name and even colors of his famous roast chicken restaurant chain.
The Intellectual Property Office has ruled that inasal is a descriptive manner of cooking meat and therefore not legally protected.
Launched in 2011 for P 1 a pack, the crackers on the other hand could not be confused by consumers with the roast chicken even with the Ma’am Inasal’s yellow, red and green colors of its plastic packaging highly evocative of the Mang Inasal colors, the trademark office ruled.
“They do not flow in the same channels of trade as to result in any confusion,” said adjudication officer Ginalyn Badiola, adding that the crackers, unlike the roast chicken, are sold in sari-sari stores and groceries.
The Ma’am Inasal crackers are made by Gold Medal Food Manufacturing Corp. of Pasig, controlled by Rodolfo Lim See, who also owns the International Food Snacks Corp.
Sia, for his part, will no longer have to worry about the imitative biscuit, having completely divested himself of the Mang Inasal chain in favor of listed Jollibee Foods.
Mang Inasal was represented in the litigation by Quisumbing Torres, Gold Medal by Sioson Sioson & Associates.
Statisticians boost Duterte spending
The sleep-inducing statistical profession is adding P1.3 billion to the “golden age of infrastructure” spending of the Duterte administration by literally scaling up its offices.
Chaired by Economic Planning Secretary Ernesto Pernia, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) is building a 23-story office along East Avenue in Quezon City to house the various statistics and civil registrar offices scattered throughout the capital city.
The P1.3-billion building is slated to start construction by next year and should hopefully be finished by 2019.
Headed by national statistician Lisa Grace Bernales, the PSA is currently renting office spaces at taipan Lucio Tan’s CyberPod Centris along EDSA near the corner of Quezon Avenue.
Over at the Bangko Sentral, Governor Amando Tetangco Jr. is boosting the green credentials of the central monetary authority by installing solar panels on top of its main Malate building as well as in its currency printing plant in Quezon City.
The bare Malate rooftop was being used mainly as a jogging path by the likes of Deputy Governor Nestor Espenilla Jr. some 20 pounds ago.
Money talks
• Thailand’s largest alcohol company and one of the biggest in the region, ThaiBev, is raising a toast to the Filipino market, saying it plans to team up with local partners to set up a whiskey factory in the Philippines “in the near future.”
• Alphaland chairman Roberto Ongpin is negotiating to acquire a second ATR 72 for use in his Balesin island resort, bringing the Alphaland aviation fleet to five planes and capacity to transport up to 600 passengers a day.
“We feel confident that we can get it flying sometime in January and this will be heaven-sent, because the first quarter of the year until Easter time and after the school term is over is always the busiest time at Balesin,” Ongpin said in his usual chatty letter to club members.
Heard through the grapevine
Somebody within the Presidential Communications Office – the cameraman or the video editor, perhaps? – is not a great fan of, or is playing a joke on, presidential legal counsel Salvador Panelo.
Not too popular with the mainstream media in the first place, Panelo was seen dozing off in the short video posted in Malacanang’s Facebook page, so unlike all the other perky and working Cabinet men in the same PAL flight to the justconcluded APEC Summit in Peru.