If there is one thing I know about McLaughlins, its that they don’t know the first thing about keeping a low profile. Especially when they are from the south side of Chicago. Hopefully you came from a more gentile branch of the family!
CJ
I’m sure that you understood that I meant to write “genteel”, though gentile probably works as well.
CJ
Wow, that is pretty stupid. It’s the guys NAME, for crying out loud.
Well, if your name is McDonald, just try opening a hamburger shop using your name as the name for the shop 
How about if my name is McDowell?
A few of us were talking about this at lunch and came up with a few reasons why we might tell McDonald’s to do the same thing, provided of course, that we could land that cash cow as a client (pardon the metaphor mixing). NOTE: I am not defending McD’s, just playing the devil’s advocate.
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The boundary wherein legal use ends and dilution of a mark begins is kind of unclear. If you allow too much use, your mark could lose strength/value. Therefore, they may be going after everyone as a matter of principle in that if the court decides that that use is not diluting the mark, then its not; in this scenario there is no gray area.
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Deterrance - because dilution can hurt McD’s, they go after everyone. After a while their reputation is such that folks self censor to avoid using McD’s marks (or something similar), thereby achieving the same ends.
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Law firm milks client for every last dime. Nuff said.
For some weird reason, while scrolling page of the thread titles, I would always read this one as Get MeFucked, pause and wonder for a second and move on. Even when I entered to read it it was wanting to know why the OP wants to get fucked??
It happens…sometimes.
Please carry on.
McBear it and we’ll McShare it.
McOg, I can’t McStop!
Considering your screen name, you better not be!
Apparently that doesn’t matter. That’s right, you can’t go into business under your own name or nickname, if somebody else was there first - even if they’re in a completely different business:
The law is an ass. But we already knew that.
Just by memory since I have to go out:
There was a hamburger or bar place that had the name “Jeep’s” of course, Chrysler corp. took the owner to court.
The bums at Chrysler lost the case when the mother of the owner produced a picture of him with a sign that had his nickname as a kid years before Chrysler made the Jeep.
The lawyers then retorted that the owner of the place and Chrysler reached an agreement: Chrysler will not do hamburgers and Mr. Jeep will not make cars!
As for McDonass, 60 minutes reported years ago that there is an inn in England (or Scotland) called McDonalds, that is older than the golden arches and they do serve food too! I would like to see them put a shop in America just to make the super sizers super annoyed.
At least that’s a little more logical. If the guy’s name was McDonald, and he opened a hamburger joint and called it McDonald’s then I could maybe see the point of not allowing him to do that.
Damnit! Stop slipping posts in there before me. 
I was responding to RTFirefly’s. And to expound, I understand that McDonald’s invented the idea of sort of randomly attaching “Mc” to the front of words, and I don’t think that anyone should be allowed to do that indiscriminately, and I also understand that you might not be able to use your own name as the name of your company if someone else used it first. But THIS case makes no sense to me. He’s not stealing the “Mc” idea from McDonald’s, it’s already part of his name. And he’s not stealing their name, because the first two letters are the only thing they have in common. I’m actually not against them saying, “Hey, we invented the Mc thing; you can’t do it”, but I just don’t think that’s what happened here.
Actually, McFuckwits have said to McBratney that they won’t try to stop him if he uses his whole name.
Of course. “McBratney” is too long to fit across the player’s asses, so that’s no use.
Bear in mind that McBratney has just changed firms, he needs publicity, he sponsors a football team (know many consumers of intellectual property who choose their lawyer based on what they see written on a lower grade rugby league footballer’s ass?) he uses a mark on their uniform that is going to get up the nose of the biggest baddest trademark defender in the land and as a result, ends up with a story including his name, his photo, his description as an intellectual property lawyer and the name of his firm, on the front page of the major newspaper for this city.
Do I need to paint you a picture?
There are a couple of McDuck’s in Chicago - same Donald-like logo, too.
Allow me to explain: Scrooge McDuck got translated into Spanish as Rico McPato, thus the name.
Funny eh? Donald’s uncle is called McDuck, I wish McDonald would sue Disney and maybe they would self-destroy in a giant legal meltdown. Oh well, a girl’s dream.
Now, I take your McPato and raise you a McDowell: years ago, before the WTO put their foot down and made us respect international trademarks, there was a McDowell in one of the most important corners of the city. And they had an M that had an eerie resemblance to the golden arches. All coincidences of course ;). The first McDonald franchise in the island was there. They had to buy them off.
There was also a Burger King somewhere in central Illinois that predated the mega-corporation. They were allowed to continue business in their area with the provision that they cannot expand out of that area. The way it works is that if I register my trademark with the US PTO, I am entitled to exclusive use of that mark throughout the US. But where you later find someone that was using the name first, your rights are subject to the rights of that senior user of the mark. If that senior user was only selling burgers in a small midwestern town, that’s where the senior user has rights. You can’t go into that area. BUT, and this is the big one, your trademark rights will prevent the senior user from expanding into the area that you have exclusive rights to.
CJ
Will you sell your Big Micks under your Golden Arcs? And will your buns have seeds?
Oh, I agree 200% that the McBratney guy planned this whole thing and is a shit stirrer. I still don’t think McDonalds have any legitimate interests involved. After all, as someone else pointed out, he isn’t making burgers, he’s using an abbreviation of his own name, which isn’t similar to McDonald’s, apart from the first two letters.
So, yep, McBratney is playing a game. BUT, McDonalds chose to enter the field and play, too, and for that I reckon they’re McWankers
If he feeds his players nothing but McDonald’s food for thirty days, that problem may solve itself.
'Course, when I first saw the name McBrats, I flashed on the SNL sketches with the Mike Ditka clones on theri cable access show, surrounded by hundreds of pounds of artery-clogging grilled meats. then I thought: "What if McDonald’s wants to introduce bratwurst sandwiches under the name McBrats on a regional basis, for possible expansion to corporate-wide distribution? Would this guy sitting (HAH!) on that name impede that?