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David Chang's muku finds itself in the middle of some chili crunch drama muku has trademarked chili crunch a spicy
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oily crispy condiment popular in Asian countries after sending cease and assist letters to manufacturers using the name
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the brand has been accused of trademarking a generic cultural product some critics have compared it the move
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to trademarking ketchup and suggested its mon his Monopoly Behavior a company in Denver previously owned the trademark
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and sent a CE to his letter to Mama fuku which instead has instead worked to purchase the trademark for itself I I
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Scott you're a branding person what the heck chili crunch I've seen chili crunch
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stuff all over the place in Asia and also anytime you go to an Asian market there's a million chili crunch things
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this seems crazy for for for M fuku and David Chang to do he looks like an we your thoughts on like this
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marketing thing well it's like the majority of bad ideas started out as good ideas and that is our ability to
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protect IP is really important whether it's someone's likeness whether it's the the patents or the you know Chemical
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Context of a pharmaceutical America's Innovation and our economy relies on what you would Loosely called
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intellectual property protection and our ability to legally protect it this has it gone crazy this reminds me of when
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Paris Hilton tried to trademark that's hot oh right yeah yeahhuh I knew you'd be good at this go ahead and someone
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said that no you can't trademark this so the reason why we have thoughtful judges
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in law and and and cases is that we can say all right there is a line here because what you have is it's been
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weaponized in the sense that these especially big companies or well resourced companies send cease deis
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letters to everyone for anything that smells of anything remote and they use it as a means of suppressing competition
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and also they use it as a means of trying to get unearned PR for example Amazon will file a patent for a not only
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a floating Warehouse which is probably um physically uh impossible for the the next couple centuries they will file a
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patent for a projectile defense Shield of their floating warehouse and the reason they do it is they know that
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reporters at Forbes and other Business magazines troll patent filings and then write about them so IP protection has
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taken on all this different Nuance including intimidation including well-resourced monopolies they Conant
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because if you get a cease and toist letter and you're a small company you're sort of inclined to say am I really
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going to take on this well-resourced company or am I just going to find another name but this is an example of a
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gone Haywire these are generic terms and I believe the court will say sorry this
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term has become generic you can't own it I think this is exactly why to talk about this even though people are sort
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of losing their minds on um on the internet here it's really important what he's done here like and I agree with you
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I agree with you this is a where do you think it's going to end up it'll be dismissed dismissed meaning he won't be
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able to to to cease into system no yeah it'll be this will be as you call it legal harassment they'll say you have no
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domain over this name and yeah and you should pay back the legal fees for the people where you're creating you know
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what whatever you call it a superflous or whatever the term but it's an issue around the trademark office too because
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I think he he does own the trademark right he owns it well but but if it's tradem markable they'll they that's
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right I can't believe he got the trademark at all right so I I just don't I I don't
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know you know I look this is a this is for IP lawyers but your ability to Inc to encourage people to make the
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requisite investment in developing important differentiated intellectual property is really important to provide
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that protection at the same time you have to ensure that there's a competitive marketplace where people who
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are trying to develop their own IP don't bump into IP that's been inflated Beyond
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reasonable protection