Language lines have been drawn in the battle to snare supermarket shoppers in Macau. But they are crossed lines.
The right to use the name 'Park'N Shop Supermarket Ltd' in the enclave has been snapped up by executives from the Hong Kong chain of the same name, offspring of Chinese-speaking Li Ka-shing. The right to use the name Pak Kai Chu Cup Si Cheong (the Cantonese translation of the above) is owned by a Macau businessman named Fred Palmer.
The dispute dates back 16 years when Mr Palmer and staff of Hutchison-owned Park'N Shop, who had been working together in a store in Macau, fell out with each other. They parted company - and parted companies.
Now the Hutchison chain is expanding through the region, and wants to open branches in Macau. Hence the reason both firms have been filling in forms at the companies' registry in Macau.
So if one supermarket is called Park'N Shop and the other is referred to in speech as Pak Kai (pronounced 'buk guy') to which will people go? Incidentally, neither side appears to have considered another option: register the name spelt correctly. It should be 'Park 'n' Shop', with a space after 'Park' and two apostrophes around a lowercase 'n'.
Where did this spelling mistake come from? One theory is that the name was copied - I mean 'inspired' - by a United States supermarket chain called Park'n Save which includes a suspiciously similar grammatical slip. Yep, that's right, even Hong Kong spelling mistakes are not original.