20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Didn't Know About Burger King
17. Burger King Is Called Hungry Jacks In Australia
The trouble with building a global franchise brand is that a competitor in another country may already own your company name, which is what happened when Burger King attempted to expand into Australia. Because the name was trademarked by a takeaway in Adelaide, the company provided the Australian franchisee, Jack Cowin, with a list of possible alternatives, from which he chose Hungry Jacks, which was derived from a pre-existing trademark registered by Pillsbury, Burger Kings then parent company. Established in Perth in 1971, Hungry Jacks was supposed to revert to Burger King when the copyright claim ended, a move Cowin resisted, resulting in legal proceedings that ended when an Australian court ruled in Cowins favour in 2001.
Ian Watson is the author of 'Midnight Movie Madness', a 600+ page guide to "bad" movies from 'Reefer Madness' to 'Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.'
