ABSTRACT
Facts: On 7 July 1996, Chester Orr J refused an application by the appellant (McDonald’s Corporation) for an interlocutory injunction restraining the respondents (McDonald’s Corporation Ltd and Vincent Chang) from ‘using upon any sign, banner, advertisement or other article the name ‘McDonald’s’ or ‘McDonald’s Corporation’ or ‘McD’ or any imitation thereof whether at the respondents’ store at 1 Cargill Avenue, Kingston 10, in the parish of St Andrew or in connection with any other business, or from passing off or attempting to pass off any business carried on by the respondents or any of them as the business of the appellant or doing any act to infringe the appellant’s trade mark’, pending the hearing of the action filed by the appellant in this matter. In the same judgment the trial judge ordered on an application for an interlocutory injunction by the respondents that the appellant be restrained from opening a restaurant in the Corporate Area (as defined in the Kingston and St Andrew Corporation Act) trading under the name ‘McDonald’s’ pending the hearing of the action filed. The application for the interlocutory injunction arose out of a suit filed by the appellant against the respondents in which the appellant claimed that the respondents had since January 1995 passed off or attempted to pass off the respondents’ business and restaurant at 1 Cargill Avenue, Kingston 10, as being the business of the appellant. Furthermore, it was claimed that the respondents had infringed the registered trade marks of the appellant by using a colourable imitation of the appellant’s arched ‘M’ corporate logo on the respondents’ sign displayed at 1 Cargill Avenue, Kingston 10. Consequently, the appellant asked the court for an injunction to restrain the respondents from: (1) the doing of acts infringing the appellant’s trade mark registered in Jamaica; (2) passing off the business as that of the appellant; (3) using the names ‘McDonald’s Corporation’, ‘McDonald’s’ or ‘McD’ in a false or misleading respect contrary to the provisions of the Fair Competition Act; and (4) carrying on business at 1 Cargill Avenue or in any other restaurant under the names of ‘McDonald’s’, ‘McD’ or ‘McDonald’s Corporation’.
