"Happy Meal" is a set meal for children at McDonald's restaurants, usually accompanied by toys, and is also popular with some adults nowadays. As a large enterprise, it is naturally necessary to do a good job in the trademark layout of its well-known products. After inquiry, McDonald's not only applied for the registration of the "Happy Meal" trademark in multiple categories, but also registered defensive trademarks such as "Happy Meal M" and "Happy Meal MU".
Recently, the "Happy Meal" trademark was declared invalid, and the proposer was not someone else, but the familiar "Want Want" - Yilan Food Industry Co., Ltd. Yilan Company believes that the trademark "Happy Meal" applied for registration by McDonald's Company (registration number: 12414756, approved use of goods (Class 32): non-alcoholic beverages, syrups for beverages, beverage preparations. ) and the "Happy" series of trademarks registered by oneself constitute similar trademarks used on the same or similar goods.
In 2018, the Trademark Review and Adjudication Board ruled that the disputed trademark "Happy Meal" should be invalidated. McDonald's was not satisfied with the ruling and filed an administrative lawsuit with the Beijing Intellectual Property Court within the statutory time limit.
The court of first instance held that although McDonald's Company listed the registration information of several trademarks containing the word "Happy", Yilan Company also explained that some of the trademarks containing the word "Happy" had been invalidated. Final Court Decision: Reject McDonald's Claims.
McDonald's appealed to the Beijing Municipal Higher People's Court against the original judgment.
McDonald's thinks
1. The disputed trademark and the cited trademark are obviously different in all aspects, and "happy" as a common word, the distinctiveness is weak;
2. McDonald's "Happy Meal" has been well known to Chinese consumers after use, and each serving contains beverage products;
3. Most of the evidence submitted by Yilan Company is related to its "Want Want", "Want Tsai" and figurative trademarks, which is insufficient to prove the facts and popularity of the use of the cited trademarks;
4. The disputed trademark and the cited trademark have coexisted for many years and have not caused confusion in the market.
The court held that in this case, the disputed trademark completely contained the cited trademarks I and III, and both the cited trademark II contained the word "happy", and the word "happy" constituted the core meaning and distinctive identification part of the disputed trademark and the cited trademark II.
Most of the "Happy Meals" shown in the evidence provided by McDonald's are in standard font and fail to reflect the logo of the disputed trademark. Moreover, the evidence pointed to the children's package series provided by McDonald's, and did not directly point to non-alcoholic beverages, syrups for beverage making, beverage preparations and other goods approved for use by the disputed trademarks.
Therefore, the evidence submitted by McDonald's is not enough to prove that the disputed trademark has already gained a certain degree of popularity after being publicized and used on the approved goods, and can be distinguished from the various combination trademarks, which will not lead to the consequences of confusion and misidentification. In summary, the court ruled: the appeal was rejected and the original judgment was upheld.
It can be seen from this case that trademark registration applications pay attention to the first-come, first-come, first-served principle, although McDonald's "Happy Meal" has been popular for decades, but it was not until 2013 that McDonald's company laid out its large-scale trademark layout. Therefore, the trademark registration application of the enterprise should be early, and if you think of waiting for the enterprise or project to become larger, you will often encounter many obstacles.
However, trademark registration is a work with high professional requirements, trademark registration is also more time-consuming, so for applicants who do not have experience in trademark registration, it is recommended to entrust a professional trademark agency to handle it, professional trademark consultants are familiar with relevant laws and regulations and registration processes, can try to avoid the problems in the registration process, and greatly improve the success rate of trademark registration. If you have questions related to trademark registration, please feel free to consult Shengfan Intellectual Property Professional Consultant.