KFC’s slogan—“finger-lickin’ good”—might be the most honest thing about the global restaurant chain, perfectly capturing the shameful moment when customers are forced to sheepishly tongue-bathe their own hands to clear off the last remnants of dripping bird juice after a 2 a.m. chicken binge. But the company’s efforts to expand their salivary marketing into other languages have now placed them in some hot, greasy mouth water, with a California taqueria claiming that KFC’s Spanish slogan has ripped them off.
According to a lawsuit from Felipa Piedra, owner of El Taqueria Amigo, his restaurant has been using the phrase “para chuparse los dedos” to market itself for years. Now the phrase—which literally translates to “to suck/lick your fingers,” has been adopted by KFC, in an effort to lure the Hispanic population into its web of hardened arteries and sandwiches where the bread is also meat:
Perida claims that KFC was rejected from a trademark on the slogan last year, although records from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office—which state that the trademark is “live”—don’t seem to back that up. In any case, KFC has stated that it’s “confident that this lawsuit is meritless, and that our use of the Spanish version of our world famous slogan is appropriate.”