Food Fight - Kati Roll vs. Kati Junction
In 2014, Kati Roll (an established restaurant chain) sued Kati Junction (a newcomer) for infringing on its trademark and unfairly appropriating recipes, menu, layout and color scheme, and hiring some former workers, including a former manager, to avail itself of its trade secrets.
Kati Roll alleged:
“The Kati Roll Company has engaged in the hard work necessary to create, develop and maintain our unique restaurant experience, our brand, our valuable intellectual property and our customers’ good will,” the company said in a statement on Friday. “We do — and will continue to — protect our brand, so our customers and potential customers are not misled by impersonators.”
Kati Juction responded:
“Burger King and McDonald’s have similarities but you wouldn’t say they’re the same,” he said. “We have pistachio milk. They don’t.” Mr. Oberoi, echoing the argument in Kati Junction’s court filings, said people in India had been eating kati rolls and their traditional fillings for 5,000 years, so some similarities were unavoidable.
According to Eater (https://ny.eater.com/2015/6/10/8761509/Kati-Junction-closed-DOH):
"The former (Kati Roll) was the first to plant its tikka-rubbed flag in Midtown, and the latter (Kati Junction) is just a shameless, literal knock-off of the other restaurant — right down to the dishes, names, and numbers on the menu."
Here's the original article from the NYTimes about the lawsuit filing: https://nyti.ms/2jYL0U2
The problem solved itself when the Department of Health shuttered Kati Junction for numerous health code violations.
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