Widest? Really?
If you have seen or been to a Dosa Plaza restaurant anywhere, you must have seen their tagline “The world’s widest menu in dosas™”.
And if you have been in Dhanbad for more than a day, you surely must have seen the restaurant Waikiki at Bank More.
How are they related, you might ask?
Well, if you have eaten at Waikiki, which by the way is an excellent up-market restaurant, you would know what the link is. Waikiki’s menu runs in pages — I would guess more than twenty pages — and it’s filled with dosas for most of it. Last I counted they had 140 different types of dosas.
And Dosa Plaza themselves claim to have 104 different types of dosas in their menu. Can they claim to have the world’s widest menu in dosas when there clearly is at least another place where you get a wider range?
Dosa Plaza’s claim also carries a ™ sign — which means that they have registered it as a trade mark. All this raised a few questions for me:
And if you have been in Dhanbad for more than a day, you surely must have seen the restaurant Waikiki at Bank More.
How are they related, you might ask?
Well, if you have eaten at Waikiki, which by the way is an excellent up-market restaurant, you would know what the link is. Waikiki’s menu runs in pages — I would guess more than twenty pages — and it’s filled with dosas for most of it. Last I counted they had 140 different types of dosas.
And Dosa Plaza themselves claim to have 104 different types of dosas in their menu. Can they claim to have the world’s widest menu in dosas when there clearly is at least another place where you get a wider range?
Dosa Plaza’s claim also carries a ™ sign — which means that they have registered it as a trade mark. All this raised a few questions for me:
- Can one trade mark a phrase, which is a claim?
- While registering a claim as a trade mark, do the authorities check the validity of the claim?
- Is it ethical for Dosa Plaza to make such a claim, AND trade mark it, when it is clearly false?
- If Waikiki now decides to contest that claim and wants to trade mark this claim themselves, will they be able to?
Labels: business, Food, trade marks
posted by Hypnos @ 11:58 am
1 Comments:
At 11 June 2009 at 18:36 ,
Anonymous said...
Here I'm trying to answer your questions. I have savored the Dosa Plaza taste and I love it. But they probably have crossed the line. Anyway, here are the answers.
Ans1: Yes you can register a phrase is its part of the logo or a brand image. For Ex. McDonalds' I'm loving it
Ans2: Again, if they have registered it as a brand, there is no way you can validate it. Authorities only check if any one else has submitted a claim.
Ans3: Ideally it is not. But who knows, Dosa Plaza was unaware of the competition in distant Dhanbad ;-)
Ans4: Yes
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