McDonald's Responds to Complaint of Bullying Charity Teens [View All]

[Raejeanowl]

Mods, please allow this update to be re-posted. I am trying to avoid having the new information on McDonald's position and where to comment and/or complain disappear below the horizon in the original weekend thread, and to ensure the maximum number of DUers are aware of this outrageous David and Goliath case.

The original post with all its links is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7563114

The short version is that McD's is throwing their legal mu$cle into challenging Chicago teens who have been running a successful annual grass-roots fundraiser for the Special Olympics because they had the audacity to use "Mc" in the name of their event and sought to make it official..

Still stymied? McDonald's apparently believes they OWN "Mc", or that their fast food (and I use the term loosely) empire claim on it supersedes the rights of anyone with a Scottish or Scots-Irish surname to use it for any other purpose. Likelier still, they wish they'd thought of using it themselves, sooner!

This is the reply they sent in response to my own criticisms:

Hello Raejean:


Thank you for taking the time to contact McDonald's. We would llike (sic) to take this opportunity to share some information with you.

Regarding this matter, McDonald's has no desire to prevent this event from taking place. That is not our intent. However, the law requires us to guard against third parties that infringe our trademarks and to take the necessary action to stop those infringements.

We believe the mark at issue, "McFest," is similar enough to our brand name and McDonald's famous family of "Mc" trademarks that it's likely to cause confusion under trademark standards and/or dilute our valuable trademark rights

We hope to reach an amicable resolution with the organizers to resolve this matter so they can continue to run their event. Because this is a pending legal matter, it would be inappropriate to further comment or speculate.

Jamie
McDonald's Customer Response Center

ref#:6614406

If you are as offended by this as I am, and find the argument of likely "brand confusion" between a local high school/college band festival charity event and a worldwide purveyor of food-borne chronic illness to be totally specious, please let them know. Better yet, let all your contacts know!

http://www1.mcdonalds.com/contactus/navigate.do?link=mc...