A.M.S.P. Suppiah and his wife Kanageswary have a lot to celebrate as they win a major victory in court against McDonald’s in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia today. McDonald’s lost an eight-year trademark battle to prevent local restaurant McCurry from using the ‘Mc’ prefix in a precedent-setting judgment by Malaysia’s highest court. The Malaysian Federal Court ruled that McDonald’s cannot appeal against another court’s verdict that had allowed McCurry to use ‘Mc’ in its name and that other restaurants could also use it as long as they distinguish their food from McDonald’s. McCurry’s signage has white and gray letters against a red background with a picture of a smiling chicken giving a double thumbs-up, in contrast to McDonald’s red and yellow “M” logo. McCurry also serves only Indian food, not competing with McDonald’s menu. Though I have no idea why this couple was so insistent to keep the “Mc” in their restaurant name, it doesn’t seem they were attempting to “fake out” restaurant-goers “Shanzhai” style. I wonder if this opens the door for a chain of “McStinkyTofu” in Taiwan? I, for one, would totally be all over that.
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5 Comments to “McDonald’s Loses Trademark Fight Against Malaysia’s “McCurry” Restaurant”
JC John (ᜑᜓᜏᜈ᜔/謝施洗) wrote:
Amazing. I never thought McDonald's is strictly enforcing their trademark. I mean, here in the Philippines we see “Mc” prefixes but we never heard anything about the company enforcing their trademark or any similarity to their name.
I'm not a trademark expert (I'm not even a law expert) but I side with the court here in that the signage is different (probably even the font too), and they're not serving the same menu as McDonald's.
That's why I don't know why McDonald's is enforcing their trademark in this case. I would understand why Xerox and Nintendo will enforce theirs (Xerox and GameBoy respectively). Here in the Philippines, Xerox lost their trademark decades ago. Filipinos call “photocopy” as “xerox”. We call the “photocopier” machines as “xerox” machines. (Personally, I think in Xerox's case, their dominance backfired.)
Oh well, I hope an expert can shed more light ^_^
Posted on 08-Sep-09 at 6:16 am | Permalink
Ben Hwang wrote:
As far as trademarks go, you have to enforce registered trademarks or else you lose them.
As far as McStinkyTofu goes, I never cared for Stinky Tofu anyways…. but I personally would rather go with a brand name of “S.T. FU” since you could totally do crazy things with it and it could catch on pretty easily. What can I say, it's the marketing brain at work.
Posted on 08-Sep-09 at 12:02 pm | Permalink
Ben wrote:
As far as registered trademarks go, you have to enforce it or you lose TM status. I’m not so sure about McStinkyTofu either. I mean, I never liked Stinky Tofu to begin with but you’d be better off with a brand name like S.T.FU …. haha. Marketing brain at work! :p
Posted on 08-Sep-09 at 10:58 am | Permalink
johnminh wrote:
Ben, I'm not a fan of stinky tofu either, but I'd definitely visit S.T.FU! =)
Posted on 08-Sep-09 at 3:15 pm | Permalink
richardbaron wrote:
The recent McDonald's v. McCurry ruling is not surprising. Just by the three main DuPont factors alone, appearance, sound and meaning, these two marks are arguably not confusingly similar. Add to that the difference in menus, and the difference in trade dress, and you have a pretty strong case for McCurry, which the panel seemingly accepted. The letters “Mc” cannot be totally, exclusively owned by one entity worldwide. And it's not as if people are going to mix up McCurry with McDonalds. Now, if McCurry used the golden arches, had a clown and similar characters associated with the restaurant, that would be problematic. Those elements were not present in this case. On our site, http://www.trademarksprotected.com, we help with these trademark issues and any trademark questions.
Posted on 26-Sep-09 at 11:34 pm | Permalink
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