Yum! Brands owns both, and Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC, etc. The restaurants themselves are owned by franchisees who license the trademarks (and all kind of complicated buy-in and standards).
Yum! Brands made ThighStop to address the wing shortage and keep the association/credibility. It’s actually weirdly transparent: just like WingStop, but thighs. I don’t know if WingStop franchisees got automatic rights to that brand or not. My guess is that it was just a way to keep them afloat.
Now, the fact that WingStop has any cred is gross. I can get better wings from a mom & pop or local chain at any strip mall, or heck, a gas station than wing chains like them, BWW, etc.
I guess America outside the South and Buffalo, NY doesn’t have access to wings that don’t taste like a salt lick. It’s a tragedy.
As far as I know -- and I've double-checked this just now -- Yum Brands does not own Wingstop (which doesn't capitalize the "s", even though we all do it automatically). They own "Wing Street", which is a sub-brand of Pizza Hut. Wingstop is an independent publicly-traded company.
Wingstop created Thighstop as a "digital brand" -- essentially, a ghost kitchen run out of existing Wingstop locations. This is a trick that a lot of chain restaurants started doing since the pandemic. Denny's runs "The Meltdown" as a sandwich shop; Chili's runs "Wings & Things"; you can find others. You can only order from "Thighstop" online, but you can add a thigh to combos when you order from Wingstop if you're so inclined.
(And I have not lived in Buffalo, New York, but I have lived in the South -- and California -- and can assure you there are many "mom and pop" wing shops and local chains that…aren't great.)
Definitely some are not great, I can name 3 within a mile of me I won't go to. And some are "sketchy" but delicious. But that also applies to barbecue, mexican, catfish, etc. around me. Just look where the locals go. If there's a line at an unexpected place, it's probably good. But if it's around a college campus, it may just be cheap :).
Or you make them at home. Which is very straightforward.
This is no more fraudulent or shady than Apple having a brand called “MacBook Pro” and another one called “MacBook Air”.
> If they decide not to pursue action due to infringement
This is kind of a bizarre thing to say... they are the same company, so there is just not universe in which Wingstop would sue itself.
The regulator doesn't pursue trademark infringement cases. It is upon the trademark holder to defend their mark via proceedings. So WingstopCo would bring an action against ThighstopCo. In this case, since both marks are held by the same entity, there's no enforcement possible unless the holding entity an exclusive license to one of the marks to another party.
I've been told that trademark proceedings have to be initiated by the holder, and that the holder failing to do so is how certain phrases can become common names for a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericize...
But IANAL.
> Can you define that difference? Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close..
The author of the blog clearly identified the modus operandi. He makes a very compelling case (he obviously understand the local context, can intuit things based upon the fuzzy dataset which is result of his experiencing the system over time.. etc.).
> Where did this assumption come from? (Unilever has exacting manufacturing standards) That's a claim without any backing as far as I am aware..
The knowledge of how world works and is typically built if one is curious enough. https://www.unilever.com/news/news-search/2022/shining-a-lig...
Yes. Yes they do. Absolutely, 100%, regulators know that Wingstop and Thighstop are owned by the same entity. They know this from regulatory and administrative filings, and they know this from the advertising that could not possibly be more clear that these are the same company.
Here, Rick Ross can explain it to you in no uncertain terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTx4YuMa3cQ
Well, yes? Regulators would determine both are owned by the same entity, at which point there would be no enforcement penalty to apply.
I can define the difference clearly: "whatever a court decides"
The law is intentionally fuzzy, and in the case of trademark, it's whether the names are "likely to cause consumer confusion", which is an obviously fuzzy thing that cannot be encoded in a computer or with a set of string matching rules. Which is fine, our legal system has humans in it.
If the companies are doing so with the specific intent of causing consumer confusion, then it seems like the court would have a relatively easy time at showing that such an occurrence was likely.
My point was that similar sounding names are not automatically infringement because they need a court to decide that the similarity doesn’t matter. I explicitly pointed out two similar sounding restaurant names owned by the same entity because either they were assumed to be IP infringement until a court decided they were not, or courts didn’t get involved by default for similar sounding names.
The whole point was to make a reductio ab absurdum argument that similarity of names did not matter in terms of IP until courts were involved, so bringing it up as a reason that ghost kitchens couldn’t make similar names a silly argument to make sans lawsuits
Can you define that difference? Wingstop and Thighstop for instance are incredibly close and not enough to trigger regulatory enforcement. There is the side note that they are owned by the same entity, but do regulators know that for a fact before they decide no to enforce penalties for what you are claiming is trademark infringement?
>2. Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards, and it stands behind them (packages will follow federal labeling guidelines). It is for A/B testing of brand collaterals (name, packaging graphics, colors, copy etc.). Here obviously that is not the case.
> Assumption is Unilever creates different brands with same exacting manufacturing standards...
Where did this assumption come from? That's a claim without any backing as far as I am aware. Do you honestly believe they only make different brands because they are testing how the sound of the brands name affects sales? Nothing around compartmentalizing the risk of them causing some backlash by cutting corners or getting people ill, and the ability to just cut off that one brand rather than their entire product line?
>It is very obvious that deception is the end goal, so really don't understand "why not" remark.
It is literally the opposite to me. It feels like deception is the main goal unless they make the "Product of X Conglomerate" a larger part of the packaging than the brands label, and not the minimum size required by law, or if its legally allowed, omitted entirely from the label