Only McDonald’s can use “Mc” or “Mac” in Europe – The Observer

Faced with the danger of a potential competitor called MacCoffe, the McDonald’s multinational petitioned the European justice prefix “Mc” and “Mac” can only refer to the fast food chain.

The dispute, which began in 2008, he had his conviction and European justice ruled that any direct or close competitor McDonald’s can use these prefixes. According appropriated El País of Madrid, so determined Tuesday European justice against the Enterprise Resource Future Enterprises, based in Singapore, which applied for registration of the MacCoffee brand.

the first instance, in 2010, the Community intellectual property office accepted the name of the Asiatic society, dedicated to the sale of cafeteria asked to register as MacCoffee.

Shortly after McDonald’s reacted by requesting the annulment of brand and argued the resemblance to his and 12 other similar brands that the multinational holds in the European Union including the prefixes “Mc” or “Mac”.

In 2013, the Intellectual Property Office ruled in favor of McDonald’s and annulled the registration of the Asian MacCoffee. For it claimed that the great aural similarity could lead the public to confuse and therefore Future Enterprises could gain an unfair advantage by leveraging the reputation of McDonalds for their benefit.

The Singapore society did not accept this decision and appealed to the General Court of the European Union, which once again denied his request.

According to El Pais of Madrid, the court notes that there are similarities between the marks by the identical pronunciation of the beginning of both. It further states that the public can associate as part of McDonald’s, given that the US company has a significant range of products that are called the same.

Finally, European justice emphasizes that both companies are directed to the same type of consumer, so there may be a possible unfair competition. “It is very likely that MacCoffee is placed in the space occupied by McDonald’s to benefit from its power of attraction, its reputation and its prestige, and thus exploit the marketing effort expended by McDonald’s,” said the statement.

Background

El País of Madrid highlights that in 2006 a court in Singapore prevented Future Enterprises registration MacCoffee in China by similar to those put forward by the European courts reasons.

In addition, the European court recently ruled on a similar case, which gave reason to the company Kule against FC Barcelona, ​​who had asked unregister by the resemblance to the term culé with which it is popularly known to fans of the team. In that case the community justice said that it could not estimate the recourse for the registration of a trademark jewelry, luggage, clothing and footwear did not compete directly with any product line Catalan club.

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