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Comment by perlgeek | Hacker News Reader

McDonalds sells beef hamburgers as "Big Mac". After this ruling, they still have the exclusive right to do that.

However, it seems that McD tried to use their trade mark to prevent Supermac to sell other burgers with similar (but not the same) name.

This ruling essentially says: "Big Mac" is only protected for selling beef sandwiches, and "Supermac" is distinct enough that if you use it to sell chicken sandwiches, that's fine.

In the process, the court ruled that McD didn't actually use the "Big Mac" trademark for anything except beef hamburgers, so it's no longer a protected term for adjacent things. You could call your restaurant "Big Mac", and it wouldn't be a trademark violation, because your restaurant is not a beef hamburger.

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> You could call your restaurant "Big Mac"

This seems exceedingly strange to me. Is that really correct?

By analogy, you're saying I could open a computer store called MacBook Pro and Apple couldn't do anything about it? Or open a store called Mickey Mouse that sells plush animals, and Disney would be helpless to prevent it?

That doesn't seem plausible.

Mighty MacBook Pro, but apple gets the trademark for computers made with Apple chips. lol.

Then try opening a store called Champagne, see what happens.

> Then try opening a store called Champagne, see what happens.

Champagne is a region, and geographical indications are not trademark in the usual sense, so that's basically fine. Nobody will insist you rename a store as "sparkling wine".

The classic example of this is Apple (a.k.a. Apple Corps and their subsidiaries Apple Films, Apple Records, Apple Studio etc) versus Apple Computer.

In this case, the original complaint was by McDonald's saying that customers would confused the "mac" in Supermac's with the Big Mac. Using your analogy it would like having a company called "Mouse House" that sells anthropomorphic mice characters.

It might not be a trademark violation, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. There are other legal avenues McDonald’s could use. The absence of a registered TM doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about someone blatantly passing off [0] their product as yours (or as being officially associated with you), for example. I’m not a lawyer but I doubt you’d have a quiet life if you called your restaurant Big Mac.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passing_off

Perhaps more like a digital bookstore called Power Books, originally owned by John Power, and Apple claiming that it conflicts with Apple trademarks Apple Books and their somewhat defunct PowerBook trademark.

It's tough because Mac is a common name part and (maybe less common now) nickname, and yet it seems clear that Supermac's was created with the intention of riding McDonald's coattails. It definitely seemed so in the 80s when, I think, Galway didn't have a McDonald's and Dublin and Cork did.

For me, the really perplexing thing is that there is a market for Supermac's outside of Ireland. Then again, their food quality might be a lot better than it was years ago, and McDonald's quality has diminished. I haven't had Supermac's in at least 25 years.

> and McDonald's quality has diminished

Not sure where you're getting that from -- it's quite the opposite.

McDonald's quarter pounders used to be made from frozen, and all the popular sandwiches would sit around pre-made under heat lamps until somebody ordered one.

Now quarter pounders are made from fresh beef, and all sandwiches are made to order, so they're not sitting around drying up.

Not to mention the McCrispy is a real chicken sandwich now, a million times better than the old McChicken "chicken patty".

McDonald's certainly isn't gourmet or anything, but the quality of their beef and chicken sandwiches have most definitely improved from what they used to be.

(This is the case in the US at least.)

They don't taste as good.

I'm quite sure that's because your taste has improved. It says much more about you than it does about McD's.

The buns are usually dried out and the kitchens look perpetually understaffed and honestly chaotic. The stores look dirty. The fries are often cold. I honestly couldn't tell you what the patty tastes like in isolation from all that.

None of that even makes any sense. Buns are kept wrapped in plastic, you know the same as every supermarket, until they're used. Whatever you think of staffing or chaos has nothing to do with the taste of the food, nor does whatever you mean by it "looking dirty". Fries sit below a heat lamp and by definition can't be cold unless you're waiting 10 minutes to eat them, which is going to be the case with all fries.

You don't know what you're talking about. It's fine if you don't like McD's, but don't just make things up to justify it.

Yup, all in my head.

> Now quarter pounders are made from fresh beef

Yes, i also noticed a beef farm near every McDonald. /s

Well of course, just like there's a beef farm next to every supermarket. /s

Really not sure what your point is, to be honest? They stopped using frozen patties for them. Do you use a different definition for fresh vs. frozen meat?

lol. You are an ad for fucking McDonald’s.

Also I already know what you’re saying is true, doesn’t change the fact the food has something off about it now. I don’t recall people having midnight black shits and stomach pain from eating McDonald’s in the 90s.

I also don’t think this issue is exclusive to McDonalds though. In America, something is just not right with the food supply chains.

You love data, so go checkout the colon cancer rates in America. It’s wild.

> By analogy, you're saying I could open a computer store called MacBook Pro and Apple couldn't do anything about it? Or open a store called Mickey Mouse that sells plush animals, and Disney would be helpless to prevent it? > > That doesn't seem plausible.

Yes you could. My understanding from it is that a trademark is only valid for a certain category of "products", which also applies to company names. For example, if you make a company that sell apple juice, and you choose to call it "Apple", because you're not selling the same category of products as "Apple" which sells computers, it's allowed.

I would find strange that you could call a company selling computers "MacBook" though, but technically it's a shop vs a computer, so not the same kind of thing.

And I think this article is confusing, because it's not "Big Mac" that this restaurant is called. It's "Supermac", which isn't exactly the trademarked name. Maybe it would have been different for a "Big Mac" hamburger restaurant.

I think we nerds often fall into the trap of thinking that there must be some meta law that says "laws must treat similar things similarly" but there's no such provision in the law of any land that I know of. You're right that your analogous case seems implausible. It's irrelevant though.

And to add to that : it was a fight started by mcdonald to impede supermac, not the other way around

(it wasn't supermac trying to "steal a trademark", but mcdonald trying to use an overly large trademark to stiffle competition)

Not according to the Judgment.

On 11 April 2017, Supermac filed an application for revocation with EUIPO in respect of the EU trade mark in respect of the word sign BIG MAC.

From the article:

> The dispute erupted when Supermac’s applied to register its company name in the EU as it drew up expansion plans. McDonald’s objected, saying consumers would be confused because it already trademarked the Big Mac name. > Supermac’s filed a 2017 request with the EU’s Intellectual Property Office to revoke McDonald’s Big Mac trademark registration, saying the U.S. company couldn’t prove that it had used the name for certain categories that aren’t specifically related to the burger over five years.

While the article mentioned that I am deferring to the Court’s Judgment that provides the history of the dispute beginning with Supermac filing the revocation:

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf;jsession...

Articles often get specialized knowledge like law wrong, but maybe someone can link to McDonald’s objection to a Supermac trademark application to validate the article.

It's a counter suit, McDonald sued them for trademark infrigement, Supermac defense was to straight up go after said trademark.

Not according to the Court, can you link to the alleged lawsuit?

This is only in response to McDonald's raised an objection to Supermac registering their trademark in the EU

> This ruling essentially says: "Big Mac" is only protected for selling beef sandwiches...that's fine.

No it's not.

What happens if I create a fake meat burger (Impossible burger, etc) and call it Big Mac?

That's one of the problems with this ruling.

Typically, if there's a significant risk of confusing the two products, using the name would be a trademark infringement.

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