The Irish company Supermac succeeded for the second time to revoke a McDonald’s trademark. This time the attack was initiated against a European trademark “MC” with a priority date back to 2011, registered for the following goods and services:

29 – Foods prepared from meat, pork, fish and poultry products, preserved and cooked fruits and vegetables, eggs, cheese, milk, milk preparations, pickles.

30 – Edible sandwiches, meat sandwiches, pork sandwiches, fish sandwiches, chicken sandwiches, biscuits, bread, cakes, cookies, chocolate, coffee, coffee substitutes, tea, mustard, oatmeal, pastries, sauces, seasonings, sugar; desserts.

32 – Non-alcoholic beverages, syrups and other preparations for making beverages.

43 – Restaurant services.

The reason for this revocation was Article 58(1)(a) of the EUTMR, lack of genuine use for a period of 5 consecutive years.

McDonald’s submitted various pieces of evidence such as affidavits from heads of various McDonald’s European legal departments, menus, printouts, extracts from Annual Reports and surveys.

Unfortunately, some of them were outside the prescribed period of five years and some were even undated.

In light of this, EUIPO upheld the revocation request for most of the goods and services. The arguments were that there was no solid evidence for genuine use. What’s more, the trademark “MC” had never been used alone but only in combination with other words such as ‘McDonald’s’, ‘BIG MAC’, ‘McRIB’, ‘McMUFFIN’, ‘McTOAST’, ‘McFISH’, ‘McWRAP’, ‘McNUGGETS’, ‘McCHICKEN’ and ‘McFLURRY’.

According to EUIPO signs such as ‘McDonald’s’ and ‘BIG MAC’ were not variations of the main trademark “MC”. Others of the trademark such as McMUFFIN’, ‘McFISH’, ‘McNUGGETS’, ‘McCHICKEN’ were OK because the additional words were completely descriptive.

Taking into account all of this EUIPO revoked the “MC” trademark with exceptions of:

Class 29: Chicken nuggets.

Class 30: Edible sandwiches, meat sandwiches, pork sandwiches, fish

sandwiches, chicken sandwiches.

The full text of the decision can be found here.