McDonalds loses trademark battle to Malaysia's 'McCurry'

The world's most famous fast food chain McDonald's has lost an eight-year legal battle to prevent a local Malaysian Indian restaurant 'McCurry' from using the "Mc" trademark in its name, with the country's highest court dismissing its plea.

Malaysia's Federal Court, which ruled against McDonald's application also ordered the American food chain to pay RM 10,000 (Rs 130,000) cost to 'McCurry Restaurant (KL) Sdn Bhd'.

"Our view is that the questions posed by McDonald's were not properly framed and the court should dismiss the leave application," Chief Judge of Malaya Arifin Zakaria said.

The court had adjourned the case yesterday after finding questions raised by McDonald's lawyers unclear and asked that they be rephrased.

McDonald's, which has 185 outlets in Malaysia, filed a leave application in the apex court to challenge the Court of Appeal's April 29 ruling which said it was wrong to assume that McDonald's had a monopoly on the use of the prefix "Mc".

A High Court had earlier ruled in favour of McDonald's but McCurry took the fight to the Court of Appeal. During the court hearings, McCurry said McDonald's could not claim monopoly or exclusive rights to the use of "Mc" as that prefix was extensively used around the world as surnames, particularly by people of Scottish origin.

McCurry's menu is very different from McDonald's, it serves typical local Malaysian fare.