Scossie

Have you seen this?

A small Brisbane rugby club wants to have a sponsors name, "McBrats", (a law firm), on their shorts, and multi billion dollar company, McDonalds, are taking legal action against them because they reckon the own the trademark, "Mc"!

They say that letting the rugby club use the term "Mc", will, "confuse our customers"..!!!

Can't put my thoughts on this into words without sending the forum's, "swear filter" into meltdown!!!

http://www.theage.com.au/news/Nation...417599340.html

Go Banana's !!

Hi Scossie, as a former supplier to McD's they do actually have many of these such trademark's registered. However I do agree with you its a bit petty.

Warren

Brissiegirl

how cany they trademark Mc? it's a start of sooo many names!! totally bonkers...

samnrob2

Happens all the time - Cadbury's have registered the colour Purple! - the same one that is on their product (the big purple).

seang

Wasnt it burger king that had to change to hungry jacks as some small local shop already had the burger king name

ABCDiamond

Funny argument as they aren't called McBrat either, are they ?

We'll be eating Hungry Jacks next time my daughter wants a McDonalds !!

lynnlovessun

Next thing everyone in Scotland will have to change their surnames (and people in england and Wales too ). My maiden name was very Scottish - McIntyre!
McDonalds might of found it a threat!

Yes this angers me as well - they think they bloody own everything (and they probably do!). They are not content for feeding kids absolute rubbish food and increasing child and adult obesity in the UK but they think they own the 'Mc' in McDonalds. crazy stuff.

Lynn

Bordy

Thanks to McDonalds though the little rugby club made up of a lot of Scots & Irish are getting more press coverage than they could ever of dreamed of.

podgypossum

and yet nearly the entire world keeps buying their shite and feeding it to their kids as well!!!..have never understood it. totally crap food and they are one of the biggest companies on the planet

samnrob2

The ongoing whispers also claim that McDonalds subsidise the IRA and other militant groups in return for no hassle (bombs exploding) at their restaurants.

rubbeldiekatz

agreed, rubbish....they should ban companys like mcdonalds

smood

A small chippy at home was called 'whoppers'. It ran under this name for years until Burger King found out about it. They took the owners of the chippy to court because one of their burgers is the wopper and won! The chippy closed down soon after. Anyone who eats the crap these big chains serve up is a mug.

seang

See my post above - it worked the other way around in Australia

spalen

One of the requirements of a trademark owner , lest they lose the right to have sole use, is that they must defend its use. So if McDonalds owned Mc and didnt challenge all the uses that it 'knew about' then they would lose the ability to defend against McBurger King opening up... thats really why they pursue these seemingly petty issues.

If they were aware, or more correctly could be proved to have been aware, and they let it go - then someone really took the 'mick' (or Mc) ;-) then the mickey-taker would use the fact they didnt pursue the smaller case as a precedent to allow them to continue to abuse the trademark.

The 'confusing' comment is because thats one of the core defences/rights that a trademark owner has - we used a name that was trademarked for one premise 250 miles away but still we had to acceed to his demands to change on the grounds we could be confused with his business even though both were strictly geographically restricted to the immediate local vicinity.

gobbyjock

Yet another example of this big American global company grinding the little guy down. Talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a nut!! What they forget is that this negative sort of story does nothing for their cuddly wholesome(if their crap could ever be described as that) family image!!