The battle for Taco Tuesday has come to an anticlimactic end.
Wyoming-based “West-Mex” restaurant chain Taco John’s is giving up its trademark to the phrase Taco Tuesday after a legal challenge from the nation’s largest Mexican fast food chain.
The fast-food chain, which has owned the trademark for more than 40 years, announced Tuesday it would be letting go of the popular catchphrase and allowing its competitors to use it freely.
In exchange, the restaurant chain challenged Taco Bell and LeBron James — two entities who have previously challenged the company’s trademark, to make charitable donations, instead of using that same money in a prolonged legal battle.
Taco John’s said it will donate $100 per restaurant location to the non-profit organization Children of Restaurant Employees. The donation totals $40,000, the company said.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on being the home of Taco Tuesday, but paying millions of dollars to lawyers to defend our mark just doesn’t feel like the right thing to do,” said Taco John’s CEO Jim Creel. “As we’ve said before, we’re lovers, not fighters, at Taco John’s.”
Creel, who referred to the company’s challengers as “litigious,” encouraged them to make the donations to support the nonprofit, which supports “restaurant employees with children who are battling a health crisis, death or natural disaster.”
In May, Taco Bell, the Mexican-style fast food giant, said it wanted to “liberate” the use of the phrase Taco Tuesday, which it argued was “common sense for usage of a common term.”
Legal experts said Taco Bell had a compelling case; one that could ultimately result in Taco John’s losing the trademark anyway.
Taco John’s deciding to let go of the trademark seems to indicate that it would likely lose the legal case. But the company’s CEO went out swinging and sent a parting challenge to its competitor, in hopes of ensuring the company wouldn’t be getting its beloved slogan for free.
In the release by the Wyoming-based restaurant chain, Creel challenged Taco Bell to also donate $100 per restaurant location, about $720,000, which he said would be less than what the company would end up spending in court.
“Let’s see if our friends at Taco Bell are willing to ‘liberate’ themselves from their army of lawyers by giving back to restaurant families instead,” said Creel.
Creel also challenged Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James, who had previously sought the trademark for himself, and has since partnered with Taco Bell in the campaign, to donate any money he has received for taking part in Taco Bell’s promotional efforts.
Although the trademark symbol will be going away, Taco John’s said its restaurant will always be the original home of Taco Tuesday and the battle over the phrase has only strengthened that claim.
