IHOP sues IHOP

The International House of Prayer is a church in Kansas City which hosts a 24 hours per day, seven days per week prayer service. They have a decidedly dominionist bent and are affiliated with some of the more radical (and definitely anti-gay) elements of conservative Christianity including Lou Engle (who appears to implicitly support Uganda’s Kill the Gays bill), Michael Brown, the Brownsville Revival, and the Kansas City Prophets movement.

The church frequently goes by the acronym IHOP (their website is www.ihop.org), but maybe not for much longer; it seems the pancake chain isn’t amused. (CNN)

IHOP has filed a lawsuit against a church group called the International House of Prayer claiming that the group is illegally using the pancake house’s famous acronym.
The legal flap started earlier this month when the International House of Pancakes filed the lawsuit in a federal court in California.

The Kansas City, Missouri-based church group “selected and adopted the International House of Prayer name, knowing it would be abbreviated IHOP. IHOP-KC intended to misappropriate the fame and notoriety of the household name IHOP to help promote and make recognizable their religious organization,” the lawsuit says.

Lawyers from the pancake restaurant say the odds are stacked against the church group and provided the court with pages and pages of documentation of websites, newsletters and signs on buildings where the prayer group allegedly used the IHOP acronym.

 By Timothy Kincaid