On January 11, 2019, in a landmark ruling, the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) revoked McDonald’s International Property Company, Ltd., (McDonald’s) European Union trademark registration No 62 638 for the trademark “BIG MAC.” Citing as the reason for the revocation, the EUIPO pointed to McDonald’s failure to prove that it had used the “BIG MAC” trademark in the European Union for a continuous period of five years. Trademark rights are not like patent rights or copyrights. Patent and copyright owners can obtain those rights without ever selling a single item, and maintain those rights even if the owners never put those rights to use. Conversely, to obtain and maintain trademark rights, the trademark owner must actually use the trademark in association with the sale of goods or services. Failure to continuously use a trademark will result in those trademark rights being lost. So what happened in this case?…
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