A south London noodle-soup shop announced it’s changing its name from Mo Pho to something else, not because outraged villagers found offense with a restaurant name that looks like mo fo, and not because pho is pronounced fuh and the pun doesn’t really work. It’s all because a central London chain called Pho Cafe trademarked the word pho in 2008 and its legal team is going after all potential infringement cases. So the proprietors of the restaurant formerly known as Mo Pho are rebranding, and in the meantime, some are angry that a word with such a strong significance to Vietnamese culture can be trademarked at all. Others are just pissed. “It’s like one fish and chip shop owning the word ‘chips,’” one supporter wrote on Facebook. [Newshopper]
