Buffalo Wild Wings can keep the name “boneless wings,” a federal judge rules

Buffalo Wild Wings can continue to call its menu item as such “boneless wings,” a federal judge ruled Tuesday, dismissing a lawsuit claiming the name amounted to false advertising.

U.S. District Judge John Tharp in Illinois issued a 10-page ruling allowing the sports bar chain to continue calling its menu item “boneless wings” after a Chicago man filed a lawsuit accusing the restaurant of false advertising, saying the boneless wings were too expensive because they are essentially chicken nuggets.

While Aimen Halim argued in the lawsuit that Buffalo Wild Wings should call the product something else, such as “chicken poppers,” Tharp said there was no meat on the bones.

“Halim has not raised enough factual allegations to make a claim,” Tharp wrote. “While he may bring the claim because he has plausibly alleged economic harm, he does not plausibly allege that reasonable consumers are fooled by BWW’s use of the term ‘boneless wings.'”

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Halim sued Buffalo Wild Wings shortly after visiting the restaurant in January 2023, claiming he was misled by the chain’s marketing.

Halim claimed that the boneless wings are just “slices of chicken breast meat, fried like wings,” and that customers would either pay less for the boneless wings or not buy them at all if they knew what was in the product.

Halim said he later regretted purchasing the item after learning how it was made, which he said left him “financially injured as a result of the defendants’ false and deceptive conduct.”

In his ruling, Tharp said that while the boneless wings are “essentially chicken nuggets,” the product concept was not new, noting that Buffalo Wild Wings had sold them since 2003.

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A federal judge ruled that Buffalo Wild Wings’ boneless wings are not misleading and dismissed a lawsuit over the name of the menu item. (iStock / iStock)

“Boneless wings are not a niche product that would require a consumer to do extensive research to find out the truth,” he wrote. “Instead, ‘boneless wings’ is a common term that has been around for more than two decades.”

Halim accused Buffalo Wild Wings of violating the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act, breach of express warranty, common law fraud and unjust enrichment.

Tharp also cited a 2024 Ohio Supreme Court ruling in which the court ruled that “[a] A diner reading “boneless wings” on a menu would no more believe that the restaurant justified the absence of bones in the items than believing that the items were made from chicken wings, any more than someone eating “chicken fingers” would know that he was not given fingers.

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A judge rejected the claim that the labeling of Buffalo Wild Wings’ boneless wings misleads customers. (Getty/Getty Images)

Tharp added that a “reasonable consumer” wouldn’t think that the food chain’s boneless wings were “really deboned chicken wings, reconstituted into a sort of Frankenwing.”

The court allows Halim to file an amended complaint by March 20, although Tharp noted that it is “difficult to imagine” he could present additional facts that would show Buffalo Wild Wings “committed an act of deceit.”