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Comment by sjwright | Hacker News Reader

Even if McDonald's were being total dicks about Supermac's, the remedy shouldn't be for the Government to act like a petulant child.

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It's not the government. It's an independent agency that follows it's procedures correctly no matter whether it's a mom&pop shop or a global giant. McD caused the whole issue and then didn't bother submitting the right kind of evidence.

What was the right kind of evidence?

The independent kind. Like said many times by others here, a news article fron those years would have sufficed.

Seems like they submittet proof that they used the trademark in marketing materials, but no independent proof that they actually managed to sell even a single BigMac commercially.

They provided detailed sales numbers.

They provided the number “75” for each year with nothing to back it up.

You do understand that the only reason why trademarks exist is the Government?

Of course, but they were made to exist under a set of rules and principles. That doesn't give the Government an excuse to act like a petulant child.

The government didn't act like that, they followed their rules. From what I gather, they wanted independent evidence and McDonalds gave them brochures and data printed in-house.

If "everyone knows McDonalds sells Big Macs" is a good argument then it shouldn't be hard to find evidence that it indeed is so. It wouldn't have been hard, McDonalds just didn't bother to provide that for some reason.

If a small, young company would try to defend their trademark nobody would believe them even if they printed brochures, menus, and told "yes, we really really really do sell these". There's nothing of substance in such claims. Printing is cheap.

It's not the government, it's a court.

In most (all?) democracies a court of law is a branch of Government. In the USA the judiciary is described as being co-equal to the executive and legislative branches. It's largely the same in the European Union and Westminster-style governments.

Because McDonald’s should not have to follow the rules and deliver the right papers and evidence when requested to do so of course.

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