> I'm genuinely confused as to how McDonald's could have lost this. Interesting. The purpose of the trademark rules is to prevent confusion. Owning marks serve

> I'm genuinely confused as to how McDonald's could have lost this. Interesting. The purpose of the trademark rules is to prevent confusion. Owning marks serves no other purpose except to enable customers to correctly correlate this mark to this company. You can see how this evolves in England's "Passing Off" which is broader than just trademark protection. So, if the other side can afford lawyers (and so you can't just win by default) you need to persuade a court that it would be confusing for customers if they could do the thing you want to forbid, are you still genuinely confused ? The court was not persuaded that a "Mighty Mac" is confusing and people might think it's a Big Mac, nor that "Supermac" is confusing and people might think it's McDonalds. Seems reasonable.