McCurry 1 – McDonalds 0

A Malaysian court has sent fast food giant McDonald’s packing after an eight-year trademark battle with a Kuala Lumpur restaurant over it’s name, McCurry.

McCurry, which serves Indian food, is an abbreviation for Malaysian Chicken Curry and Malaysia’s highest court agreed – and ruled that McDonald’s cannot appeal the verdict in a precedent-setting judgement.

At last a victory for the small man in a court case involving McDonald’s. The burger giant seems to have the idea that anything beginning with the letters “Mc” belongs to them. They even said so themselves during a case against a sandwich shop owner from the UK.

“If someone used the Mc prefix, even unintentionally, they were using something that does not belong to them” – in my opinion that is absurd.

Will they be suing me next and asking me to change my surname…

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• Richard Baron on October 2nd, 2009 at 7:27 am

  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.

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