The Federal Civil and Commercial Court of Appeals (Division III) undetook a new chapter in the trademark dispute between McDonald’s and the Argentine chain Mostaza in Docket No. 7609/2025 (“Mc Donald’s International Property Company Ltd v. Mostaza y Pan S.A s/ medidas cautelares”). The court upheld a precautionary measure in favor of McDonald’s against Mostaza, ordering the immediate cessation of the use of the designation “MEGA TASTY”. The judges considered that there is a marked conceptual proximity between the claimant’s sign, “GRAND TASTY”, and that of the defendant, which creates a latent risk of confusion among consumers and the possible dilution of the registered trademark.
At the center of the dispute, McDonald’s argued that it owns a “family of marks” based on the word TASTY, used publicly and prominently worldwide, and that the use of “MEGA TASTY” by its competitor constitutes an infringement that causes harm in itself. For its part, Mostaza defended itself by arguing that the term “TASTY” is descriptive and commonly used in the food industry, so the claimant’s marks would be “weak” and insufficient to prevent others from using that element, especially when they already have their own family of marks under the prefix “MEGA“.
The most disruptive point of the decision was the extension of the precautionary measure to the term “MEGA TASTE”. The judges determined that the modification of a single letter is merely a superficial change that does not manage to dispel the conceptual evocation of McDonald’s original product.
The court’s decision reinforces the protection of “families of marks” and reminds us that, in Intellectual Property Law, conceptual identity carries as much weight as phonetic similarity; changing one letter is not enough to avoid infringement when the evoked idea remains intact.
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