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McDonald's Retains Rights to Pizza.eu Domain

Posted by Adam Kuban, July 28, 2006

An interesting case involving McD's, domain-name rights, and pizza in Europe:

McDonald's will keep the domain name Pizza.eu after a legal challenge to the burger giant's right was rejected this week.

Torbjorn Ahlberg of Swedish domain name sellers TBA Media had challenged McDonald's registration, which was sought during an initial period when the .eu space was open only to trademark owners.

McDonald's relied for its .eu application on a Hungarian trademark. The mark was a logo in which two McDonald's 'Golden Arches' (usually used to represent an 'M') were rotated to represent the 'Z's of the word pizza. A similar mark was registered in the UK in 1994 but expired in 2004.

According to the story on theregister.co.uk, McD's only sells pizza in Italy. (Italy: Why would you buy that crap?) Perhaps the chain plans to expand its cheesy offerings across the continent?

Swede can't swallow McDonald's pizza | The Register

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