Colonel Sanders' huge Kentucky mansion is up for sale but bosses at KFC are not happy.
The historic estate includes a 5,000 sq ft private home called Blackwood Hall, where Colonel Harland Sanders lived with his wife until he died aged 94 in 1980.
Also on the ground, and included in the listing is a restaurant, which the Sanders opened for his wife in 1959.
The Claudia Sanders Dinner House, in Shelbyville, Kentucky draws in locals and tourists with its fried chicken, coleslaw and homemade pies.
Some interested buyers have said they want to franchise Claudia Sanders Dinner House and open more restaurants using its name, the New York Post reports.
But the prospect of a rival fried-chicken chain that uses the Sanders name has attracted the attention of KFC’s parent company YUM! Brands, whose legal team have submitted a filing to the US Patent & Trademark Office days after the properties were put up for sale.
The filing seeks to reinforce protections of KFC trademarks, including “Colonel Sanders’ Original Recipe,” “Col Harland Sanders” and “It’s Finger Lickin’ Good.”
“It’s a very unique situation,” Jonathan Klunk of Six Degrees Real Estate, which has been hired to sell the properties, told the Post.
“We are selling Claudia and she doesn’t have as much name recognition as her husband, but a buyer can’t describe her without mentioning both her husband and KFC.”
The property has been in the hands of Sanders family friends Tommy and Cherry Settle since the 1970s.
Cherry, who is 78, was a hostess at the restaurant when she and Tommy, now 80, bought the property from the Sanders.
Tommy had run a plant that supplied the restaurant with hams.
The couple run the restaurant and currently live in Blackwood Hall but want to retire.
YUM! did not respond to multiple calls and emails for comment, but KFC is famously secretive about its fried chicken recipe, Sanders’ original 11 spices and herbs.
Mr Klunk says there are a lot of similarities between the restaurants’ menus but that the Dinner House has “no connection to the KFC recipe".
The Mirror has contacted KFC for comment.
