Alright, this one is going to get a bit convoluted, so stay with me here. There seems to be something going on in the foreign foodstuffs and restaurant industries lately when it comes to trademarking otherwise common phrases for niche foods in a way that pisses off other providers that operate in those same niche markets. An example of that recently came to be in the form of a “chili crunch” trademark granted to David Chang, after which he blasted out a bunch of cease and desists notices. Chang eventually apologized and promised to not enforce his trademark any longer, though that came only after some rather severe public backlash.

And now we have an interesting and somewhat similar situation out of the UK. Dishoom is an Indian restaurant chain that is seeking to revoke a trademark granted to another restaurateur, Tariq Aziz. That trademark is for “Ruby Murray” in the restaurant industry. Dishoom appears to be at least slightly misguided in its petition, in that it claimed that Aziz was not using the mark in commerce. He absolutely is, having a restaurant named Ruby Murray in London.

The restaurant group’s lawyers want the term to be revoked as a trademarked phrase because they believe it has never been used for commercial purposes.

A spokesperson for Dishoom said: ‘A third party has a trademark registration for Ruby Murray and we don’t believe that they have ever used it.

However, Aziz reportedly refused the application, claiming that he is using the name for a food premises in Islington and does not want the trademark to be revoked.

He said: ‘We have a premises in Islington, north London, called Ruby Murray. It’s closed for refurbishment at the moment, but will reopen soon’.

That certainly appears to be true, unless this website for the Ruby Murray restaurant in London is somehow wholly made up, which I doubt. If that really is the sole reason that Dishoom is seeking to invalidate the trademark, it seems unlikely to work.

Which doesn’t mean that canceling the mark isn’t something that shouldn’t absolutely be considered. Why? Well, it has to do with how the name Ruby Murray became associated with Indian food to begin with.

See, Ruby Murray is the name of a British musician from the 1950s. She was wildly popular at that time throughout the UK and elsewhere. And, in keeping with one of my favorite parts of British slang, where you refer to one thing by the name of a completely different thing that rhymes with the original thing, Ruby Murray’s name became a slang term in the 60s for Indian curry.

So, what Aziz actually did was to trademark a common, generic slang term for a common ingredient in Indian food that was also the name of a very famous person. That would seem to raise all kinds of potential problems for the mark and I would argue it never should have been granted. Its obviously considered a generic term, or you would have thought Murray’s heirs or estate would have challenged the mark themselves.

We’ll see if Aziz truly wants to defend this trademark, as he has until July 15th to state so. It would be better if this all went away and everyone just got back to making awesome Indian food.