The Subway "restaurant" chain has mailed cease-and-desist letters to small sub shops across the country giving them a friendly heads up that they can no longer use the word "footlong." The company has applied to trademark the word so everyone else will just have to invent their own language to describe the size of the popular sandwich. We believe the "30.48 Centimeter Long" hasn't yet been taken, so that's one option.
Subway's legal action came to light when Blair Hensley, owner of the Coney Island Drive Inn in Brooksville, Florida, passed his C&D along to the media. (You can read it yourself here as pdf.) Hensley tells NPR he's got a hand-painted menu board from 1963 that says "footlong specialists," explaining, "We do have short dogs, but the majority of dogs we sell are footlongs. That's why you come here." In the wake of the bad publicity, Subway has generously allowed Hensley to continue using their word, but the company won't say how many other establishments have been sent C&Ds.
A Subway spokesman explains that the company is mainly doing this to "benefit" any sub proprietor who might accidentally confuse their patrons. "If 'footlong' is a name that's been associated with us, it would benefit them that we would take an action like this to protect the association," the Subway flack tells NPR.
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