I just thought I'd throw my two cents' worth into the discussion.What especially galls me about McDonalds is the notion of this huge monolithic corporation thinking that it owns not only all rights to the name "McDonald", but also *anything* with a "Mc" in it, and employing legions of attorneys to steamroller any violator of their perceived divine right into submission.
Another couple of recent examples of this same sort of mindset:
** A few months ago, someone in Seattle operated a little coffee cart that he named "Federal Expresso". Once the "captains of industry" at Federal Express got wind of this, they trained their big legal guns on this poor little guy, threatening him with lawsuits, financial ruin, etc etc if he didn't change the name. Don't these idiots have even the slightest sense of humor? Don't they realize that it might actually be *beneficial* to their business to adopt a little flexibility, and permit someone in a completely unrelated field of business to put a little spin on their name? As for me, I've switched to UPS and Airborne after this.
** In my opinion, the most egregious example of this sort of corporate arrogance occurred a few years ago, when Anheuser-Busch, makers of the beer-flavored swill known as Budweiser, decided to try and market their product in Europe. Well, it turns out that there already was a beer sold in Europe named Budweiser. The brewery exists in the Czech town of Budweis (named Ceske Budejowice since WW2), and is one of the oldest breweries in continuous operation in the world, brewing their fine product since the year 1260 -- that's right, over SEVEN HUNDRED YEARS! The fine legal minds at Anheuser-Busch decided they would take the low road and use the same bullying tactics of endless lawsuits, financial ruin, etc to try and force Budweiser to change its name. I don't know the details of the maneuvering, but the end result was that nobody bought the American "Budweiser" in Europe because it is such awful swill, and the real Budweiser continues to brew and sell its fine beer under its legitimate and rightful name.
Given the obvious bad public relations that this sort of mindset and activity generates, what can McDonalds, Fed Ex, Anheuser-Busch, et al possibly hope to gain from behaving like a big corporate bully? Perhaps one idea of giving them a taste of their own medicine would be to have the German city of Hamburg decide that it owns all rights to the term "Hamburger", and force everyone in the world to call a "hamburger" something else -- like a "ground-up dead cow patty". But then, if Bill Clinton ever visits Hamburg and tries to use his Kennedy-like posturing there, what would happen if he were to declare, "Ich bin ein Hamburger"?
