Americans in Shanghai have been excited about In-N-Out's potential China expansion since a new, nameless shop advertising "Animal Style" burgers on Yanping Lu arrived a couple months ago, and their hopes were exacerbated last week when a branded In-N-Out pop-up shop appeared in Sasha’s in the name of “soft market research.” Were they really thinking of coming over?

No. They never really considered it, and they’re not going to do it. (If they’re not going to expand to New York, where there’s a ready-made market, why would they expand to China?) The gimmick was just a fun bit of legal posturing. The people behind the Yanping Lu shop turned out to be Caliburger, In-N-Out was pissed about it. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the trademarks on their own burgers anywhere other than in America (Caliburger also already dibs'ed them in "Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe,") so while In-N-Out did file a lawsuit, they couldn’t just straight up sue Caliburger for trademark infringement.

Instead, In-N-Out tried to muddy the waters using a whole bunch of legalese. To own or retain a trademark on something in a certain country, you need to both file the right paperwork and be actually actively using that trademark--In-N-Out didn’t do the former here in China, but they tried to prove the latter by flying in chefs and meat and all that for their pop-up shop.

In any case, the whole deal has been settled now, out of court, with Caliburger getting a settlement for backing off. Pretty good result for the Caliburger team and John Miller, a member of the Board of Directors who's a venture capitalist with a law degree (and no, he’s not my source on this). Looks like Caliburger will do pretty much what they were going to do (with minor modifications) and get a nice bonus out of it too. That’s why they’ve delayed their opening from this month to January, and that’s also why they’re renaming their burgers. For example, the “Animal Style” will be renamed “Wild Style” or something along those lines.

Had a Double Double (or whatever it will be called) last week and it’s pretty good, stuffed with fresh veggies, caramelized onions, Aussie beef and a delicately toasted bun. At first taste it’s better than Carl’s Jr.’s, but with my burger running close to RMB50 (plus fries, another RMB18), it’s pricier too.