Minneapolis food truck The Twisted Sister House Of Hunger were recent slapped with a cease and desist order from veteran metal act Twisted Sister, claiming their use of the name would cause “dilution of our client’s famous mark and confusion among consumers.”   While the food truck’s owners claim the legal action in unwarranted (“I don’t know how somebody can get a 20 foot aluminum box mixed up with an 80’s rock band,”), Twisted Sister manager / guitarist J.J. French (above, left) tells the greatest website of all time, Blabbermouth.net, “The fact of the matter is that trademark law doesn’t give me a choice on who and what to defend. The law is very clear: either defend your trademark or lose rights to it.”

“I get how stories like these appear like David vs. Goliath. I also get how easy it is to take cheap shots at my band because of our former image and the ’80s-era MTV iconography.”

“Over the last 35 years, I have defended my trademark against the biggest companies (Six Flags, Urban Decay, Harley-Davidson) as well as dozens of mom and pop companies. The defense is almost always the same. They first claim that they never heard of the band and then they say that no one would confuse the two anyway. I have won every case. The unique juxtaposition of the words ‘Twisted’ and ‘Sister’ have never ever appeared in print prior to my band’s use of it. This was established in the Six Flags case. The name is so unique, like LED ZEPPELIN, that any use would confuse the marketplace as either the product or service is owned or endorsed by us.”

“I really don’t understand why people feel the need to steal someone else’s property. Perhaps they are just lazy. I think that the real reason they used our name and didn’t call it The Beatles, Rolling Stones or Motley Crue House Of Hunger is that they knew that they would get sued and perhaps thought that we wouldn’t notice.

Though I fully take French’s point, no one in their right mind is going into the restaurant business hoping to remind anyone of Mick Mars.