Proving that litigation doesn’t always favour those with the deepest pockets, McCurry Restaurant (a curry fast-food restaurant), of Ipoh Road, Kuala Lumpur has beaten McDonalds in an intellectual property dispute reports The Times . Never minding legalities; purely from a money, power, determination point of view, we wouldn’t have bet the mortgage on McCurry beating the US fast food giant.

But McCurry held their nerve over an 8 year period to finally see Malaysia’s Federal Court reject a McDonald’s application to appeal against an earlier ruling allowing McCurry to use the letters “Mc” in its name.

McCurry Restaurant was founded in 1999 and was formerly known as Restaurant Penang Curry House. Serving Malaysian and South Indian specialities such as fish-head curry, tandoori naan and mutton and chicken curries, it’s a little different in style to the American burger joint. However, lawyers for the golden arched purveyor of hamburgers claimed that McCurry’s name would cause customers to confuse it with McDonald’s.

The Malaysian appeal court disagreed: “McCurry and McDonald’s are two different businesses which sell different types of food and they have different customers,” said Gopal Sri Rampril, the judge in the April appeal hearing. “The defendant’s signboard carried the lettering in white and grey on a red background, with a picture of a chicken giving a double thumbs-up and with the wording ‘Malaysian Chicken Curry’. The defendant’s presentation of its business is in a style and get-up which is distinctly different from that of the plaintiff.

Surely a relieving moment after an 8 year stomach churner.

McCurry Restaurant wins eight-year legal battle with McDonald’s [The Times]