McDonalds loses David and Goliath battle over trademark
LONDON - McDonalds has lost an eight-year legal battle with a Malaysian restaurant which it said was infringing its famous trademark.
The fast food giant has been battling a Kuala Lumpur-based restaurant called McCurry, which serves Indian food and has a smiling chicken logo, in the Court of Appeal in Malaysia.
Two years ago McDonalds won a High Court case against McCurry, but earlier today (Tuesday) a panel of three judges at the Federal Court unanimously overturned the ruling and dismissed the case.
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The owners of McCurry had insisted the Mc prefix stood for Malaysian chicken.
McDonalds, which has around 150 outlets in Malaysia, was ordered to pay 10,000 Malaysia Ringgits (£1,700) costs to McCurry.
Malaysian newspaper The Sun Daily reported that during the court hearings McCurry argued that McDonald's could not claim exclusive rights to the use of Mc as that prefix was extensively used around the world as surnames, particularly by people of Scottish origin.
The court case has prevented the owners of the family-run McCurry from expanding but they told reporters they will now focus on growing their business.
McDonalds: loses Malaysian curry case
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Comments
robin caller - 08/09/2009
McBrilliant decision- the Malaysian companylogo looks like pure "remix" - and remix is everything - everything is remix.
Robert Clements - 08/09/2009
The owners of McCurry had insisted the Mc prefix stood for ...
Rich Sutcliffe - 09/09/2009
@Robert ... Malaysian chicken. Sorry, slight production error.
Adrian Goldthorpe - 11/09/2009
This is a dangerous precendet with regards to passing off. Not only is the typography and the colour palette almost identical but the use of the icon prefixing the typography with a flash of yellow is a clear attempt to at least confuse or cause questioning in consumers minds. There could also be a further issue in that the McCurry outlet could damage the overall perception of the McDonalds brands rather than simply attempt to steal consumers through confusion. Had the proprietors been called Mc something a degree of understanding could be given towards the decision but I doubt very much that this is the case. SImply stating this is a regularly used pre-fix in Scotland surely cannot be a strong enough answer - in Malaysia at least! Had this been McHagis in Scotland run by the McTavish family I may have understood this. Perhaps we will return to the bad old days of copy cat branding being acceptable in a recession!