Matua Kahurangi
Just a bloke sharing thoughts on New Zealand and the world beyond. No fluff, just honest takes.
You may have seen the story about Riccarton High School student Ben Yang, who launched his own food business selling Korean fried chicken. The 17-year-old called it YFC, Yang Fried Chicken, and designed a red logo featuring a cartoon version of himself.
But the fun was short lived. Fast food giant KFC, apparently threatened by the similarity, fired off legal documents ordering Yang to cease and desist.
It turns out Yang is not the only one to draw the attention of KFC’s intellectual property enforcement team. I recently published a satirical piece suggesting that the government hand out KFC vouchers to high-risk beneficiaries as an incentive for sterilisation. My point was obvious: KFC has already been used as a carrot to influence behaviour, from vaccine rollouts to coaxing youth rioters off the roof of a justice facility.
My proposal: KFC vouchers for sterilisationMatua Kahurangi 4 Aug
Remember when the New Zealand Government handed out KFC vouchers to encourage people to get vaccinated during the Covid-19 pandemic? A little taste of the Colonel, all in the name of public health. That got me thinking. If we were happy to bribe people with junk food to take a vaccine, why stop there?
Yet despite the tongue in cheek nature of the article, I soon received an email from Substack notifying me of a trademark infringement complaint lodged by KFC. The notice made it clear that if I could not prove my use of KFC’s logos was legitimate, the post would be taken down, and my account could even face termination. The offending content has since been removed.
For me, this highlights the hypocrisy of a company that has no problem pushing its greasy buckets of chicken on the public, but will aggressively silence parody or competition. Personally, I think KFC is nothing more than oily rubbish. Korean fried chicken wins every time, and I am glad I have not handed over a cent to KFC in more than five years.
This article was originally published on the author’s Substack.
