Page 4 - Supermacs McBully

For McDonagh, “the Big Mac is a burger. It's not a restaurant

chain. And accordingly, they felt that even though it had been in

existence since 1996, they felt it wasn't a genuine objection." (Ref
1)

McDonagh said that the

ruling was a positive step

towards curtailing

McDonald's tactic
of registering trademarks

across the world in
advance, which restricted

smaller businesses like Supermac's from growing their
brand. He quoted examples of registration by McDonalds

such as "McCountry, McFamily, McInternet, including the

registration of the brand SnackBox, which was one of
Supermac’s most popular products, even though the

product was not actually offered by McDonalds. The EU was

basically saying you either use it or lose it.

This is not the first time a European court had ruled on

McDonald’s rights to use prefixes: In 2016, the company

won a case against a Singaporean company that had

registered MacCoffee as a European Union trademark. (Ref 2)

In fact, McDonald's has historically been "extremely litigious"

in the area of trademark law and usually won its battles.

Supermac’s success “is built on a unique menu, ideally suited

to local tastes, using real food and food ingredients sourced

locally wherever possible and enhanced by quality in every
aspect of the operation. This quality philosophy has been