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November 6, 2009

McDonald's Walks Into a Naming and Branding Lion's Den

The Eden Prairie, Minnesota restaurant The Lion's Tap has settled its trademark suit with McDonald's over the fast-food giant's use of their slogan "Who's Your Patty."

The Lion's Tap has been using the slogan since 2005. According to the Jordan Independent, "The phrase is on company T-shirts, newspaper ads and headlines the restaurant's Web site." The Lion's Tap probably will not financially benefit from this, as yesterday's filing says "All claims ... are dismissed with prejudice and without costs and disbursements of attorney's fees to either party."

This is an interesting issue not least because Lion's Tap only filed for the federal trademark a few days before the trial despite having a Minnesota trademark for the phrase.

The case was hailed in Slashfood as "a small fry" going after a "super-sized giant," with the tiny, out of the way restaurant being the small fry. Had The Lion's Tap held the federal trademark their position would have been much stronger.

DuetsBlog asks the million dollar question: "What did McDonald's know and when did they know it?" and suggests that McDonald's probably had no idea that The Lion's Tap was using the slogan.

But they should have because of the Minnesota trademark.

Duets notes that the restaurant has used other slogans in the recent past, including "Any Fresher and it Might Get Slapped," "Sponsoring the Napkin Industry Since 1977," "Yes, They Really Do Exist. Come See One for Yourself," and "Lions and Burgers and Fries, Oh My!" So even if some acolyte at McDonald's had been trolling the Internet for usage of the slogan they would have been foiled until quite recently when the restaurant's site was revamped.

Duets also discovered that the actual domain whosyourpatty.com is not held by either Lion's Tap or McDonald's but instead by Patty Wood, a real estate agent.

McDonald's probably was willing to concede the point here to avoid bad publicity, but legally things look a little murky. The Minnesota Litigator puts it very tactfully in their examination of the case: "Lion's Tap counsel has expressly invoked David vs. Goliath in the complaint and has otherwise adopted a somewhat light-hearted tone not normally associated with complaints initiating lawsuits."

I'm thinking that this was good publicity for The Lion's Tap and not worth the trouble for McDonald's.

Technorati Tags: McDonald's, Lion's Tap, Trademark Conflict, Who's Your Patty, Slogan Conflict, Tagline Conflict

Posted by William Lozito at November 6, 2009 9:40 AM
Posted to Food | Taglines | Trademarking

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