McDonald's loses trademark appeal after 8 year battle for the 'Mc' prefix

Malaysia's Federal Court has dismissed an appeal from McDonalds from the Court of Appeal's decision that the use of the prefix 'Mc' by a Malaysian chicken curry chain, McCurry did not amount to infringement (overturning the previous decision of the High Court in favour of McDonalds).

Chief Judge Ariffin Zakaria found that the court had to dismiss the appeal with costs as McDonald's failed to properly frame its questions when challenging the Appeals court's prior decision.

Under the Australian Trademark law, it would be interesting to see how an Australian court would have approached the issue, in light of the decision in McDonalds v Macri Fruit distributors
(2000) AIPC 91-583, where the trade mark office found that the use of 'Mc' was deceptively similar to the family of 'Mc' marks owned by McDonald's (the opponent was attempting to use McSalad and McFresh).