McTrademark Follies

MSNBC runs an AP wirestory reporting that hamburger purveyor McDonalds is upset by the inclusion of the word "McJob" in the latest version (11th Ed.) of the Mirriam-Webster dictionary (McDonald’s balks at ‘McJob’ entry):

In an open letter to Merriam-Webster, McDonald’s CEO Jim Cantalupo said the term is “an inaccurate description of restaurant employment” and “a slap in the face to the 12 million men and women” who work in the restaurant industry.

....

“McJOBS is trademarked and we’ve notified them that legally that’s an issue for us as well,” Riker [a spokesman for McDonalds] said.

It has taken McDonalds this long to object to a term first coined by author Douglas Coupland in 1991? I wonder if McDonalds will make the effort to go after numerous other dictionaries that include the word:

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language first included the term in 2000: McJob

A reviewer of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) would be surprised by the controversy (Reviews: AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY):

The list of words included for the first time is uncontroversial: terms like control freak, digerati, McJob, jewel box, microcredit, nanny state and wuss are now well established. [emphasis added]

WordReference.com: McJob

Wikipedia: McJob

4reference.net: McJob

UrbanDictionary.com - The "slang dictionary with definitions you write" - has five submitted definitions: McJob

A search on Google provides 5,520 hits (which will probably be increasing shortly).

Doesn't Mickey Ds realize that such efforts will only popularize the term even more? If they had ignored it, it probably would have died out, like one of the words Mirriam-Webster dropped (Out with the snollygosters). After all, "McJob" is sooo 1990s.

This would be funny if McDonalds weren't threatening legal action (alright, it is still somewhat funny). LawMeme's James Grimmelmann goes after the fast food chain represented by a clown (Tales of Trademark Abuse: McDonald's Goes After the Dictionary?):

Catch that? McDonald's wants to censor the dictionary in order to protect their brand, and they'll use trademarks to do it. This is just another manifestation of the malginant theory that once you have a trademark, you ought to be able to stop people from using the word at stake if you don't like the way they're using it. Going after the dictionary is voodoo linguistics: if "McJob" isn't in there, maybe people won't use it.

If McDonald's has its way here, it'll be another nail in the coffin of the eminently sensible idea that dictionaries ought to reflect the way people actually use language. Then again, modern trademark law is anything but sensible. [emphasis in original]