Chowking can no longer serve its “Orange Chicken” dish for now.
In his Cocktales column on InterAksyon.com, Victor Agustin explained: “Chowking, a subsidiary of Jollibee Foods, has lost in its attempt to trademark its ‘Chowking new orange chicken’ offering after the local trademark office ruled that Goldilocks had already secured the copyright to the ‘Goldilocks chicken orange’ name and mark as early as 2010.”
The Intellectual Property Office also said that Chowking had to “disclaim” the phrase “orange chicken” for its trademark application to proceed.
The report noted: “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 unregisterable portion of the applied mark.” In this case, Chowking can’t register the term “orange chicken” as it is classified as a generic term.
IPO legal chief Nathaniel Arevalo pointed out: “When it filed a trademark application for the product name with the Intellectual Property Office (in 2010), (Goldilocks) submitted a disclaimer on the exclusive right to use the words ‘orange chicken,’ recognizing that the term is generic and descriptive, and thus not capable of exclusive registration.”
A check with the Chowking website showed that the contested chicken dish, offered in the Philippines and Indonesia, had already been removed from the menu. Strangely, even the Goldilocks website no longer features the same dish.
Goldilocks was represented in the litigation by AccraLaw, while Chowking was represented by by Quisumbing Torres.
