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McCurry: Malaysian Chicken Curry Won McDonald's Trademark Lawsuit

by Scott Wu | September 8, 2009 at 08:42 am

858 views | 27 Recommendations | 4 comments

McDonald's has lost the 8-year lawsuit against Malaysian curry restaurant, McCurry. McDonald's argued that the "Mc" prefix constituted trademark infringement, the owner of McCurry insisted the "Mc" was abbreviation for "Malaysian Chicken" Curry.

McDonald's first sued the McCurry restaurant in 2001. In 2006, a High Court ruled in favor of McDonald's, and McCurry was ordered to remove the first "c", to "M Curry".

McCurry later won in the Court of Appeal, and was allowed to put the "c" back up.

McDonald's then went to the final legal avenue, the Federal Court. On Tuesday, the chief judge Arifin Zakaria said the 3 member panel unanimously dismissed the application, effectively ending the legal battle.

"We feel great that this eight-year legal battle is finally over," McCurry owner P Suppiah told reporters.

"We can now go ahead with whatever we plan to do such as opening new branches," he said.

McCurry opened for business in Kuala Lumpur in 1999, and serves Indian dishes, including fish head curry and breads including tandoori naan.

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Yuliya Talmazan

at 08:53 on September 8th, 2009

wow...McDonald's is so serious about their brand identity. Kind of reminds me about how Apple has bought out all of the businesses that had some mention of word "apple" in their brand name. Must have been a lot of trouble.

Blue Crush

at 15:06 on September 8th, 2009

Wow! Kinda vain, aren't they? Thinking Mc's gotta be all about them.

Sapawi (not verified)

at 05:53 on September 9th, 2009

Hi Swu. Hope you are fine. Great and hot article. As far as I know, the word 'Mc' means 'the son of' however it is no wonder about this McCurry case as the guys from McDonald will think that McCurry is stealing their business.The McDonald claim might be that McCurry causes people to think or get confused that's a McDonald product and that's why McDonald won't stay silent if they can appeal for the verdict.I still remember about the most popular OS today, Windows that had the similar case over the trademark against Linux OS called Lindows but the case I heard was settled outside the court and Lindows changed to present day name of Linspire (Linux).From this case, we'd better think our business name properly before getting started. Even though we are not guilty, we simply don't want to undergo that situation especially when our business is still in its early phase and also the financial is still limited.