U.S. fast food giant McDonald's lost an eight-year trademark battle to prevent local restaurant McCurry from using the 'Mc' prefix in a precedent-setting judgment by Malaysia's highest court.

The Federal Court ruled Tuesday that McDonald's cannot appeal against another court's verdict that had allowed McCurry to use 'Mc' in its name. The owner says McCurry, which serves Indian food, is an abbreviation for Malaysian Chicken Curry.

The ruling by a three-member panel of the Federal Court ends all legal avenues for McDonald's to protect its name from what it said was a trademark infringement.

"On the basis of unanimous decision, our view is that" McDonald's plea to carry the case forward has no merit, said chief judge Arifin Zakaria. "It is unfortunate that we have to dismiss the application with costs," he said.

McDonald's will have to pay 10,000 ringgit ($2,900) to McCurry, a popular eatery in Jalan Ipoh on the edge of Kuala Lumpur's downtown. McDonald's lawyers refused to comment, except to say the company will abide by the judgment.

McCurry lawyer Sri Devi Nair said the ruling means McDonald's does not have a monopoly on the prefix 'Mc,' and that other restaurants could also use it as long as they distinguish their food from McDonald's.

A Sudanese woman who wore pants in public was fined the equivalent of $200 but spared a whipping Monday when a court found her guilty of violating Sudan's decency laws.

Arriving at court Monday, Lubna Hussein wore the same pants that had led to her arrest for indecency. A defiant Lubna Hussein said she would not pay the fine and would take a month in prison instead to protest Sudan's draconian morality laws.

The 34-year-old journalist has set out to challenge the police and courts since her arrest in July by insisting the case go to trial, aiming to embarrass the Khartoum government with the publicity. Her prosecution – and the prospect that she could get the full sentence of 40 lashes – drew an international outcry.

Hussein vowed to appeal the sentence and even walked into the court wearing the same pair of loose-fitting green slacks that she was arrested in.

Toyota Motor Corp will recall 688,314 Camry and other sedans made at its two China joint ventures from Tuesday, its largest recall in the country, to fix a faulty electric switch to the window.


But analysts say the recall will not have any long-term impact on the Japanese auto maker's growth prospect in China as the defect is minor and only involves a single supplier.

The recall, which comes at time when Toyota has lost some of its steam after years of breakneck growth, may however swing some buyers to its European and U.S. rivals for now, they said.

"The size of the recall is big, but it won't be a major problem for Toyota given the nature of the defect. Still, there will be some impact for the short term," said Huang Zherui, an analyst with CSM Worldwide, a global industry consultancy.

In the first half, the Japanese automaker sold 284,000 passenger cars in China, almost unchanged from a year earlier, due largely to its limited offering of small models.

Mininova rivals Sweden's The Pirate Bay as the largest index of BitTorrent files, software that can be used to trade movies, music and computer games.

In Wednesday's ruling, the Utrecht District Court sided with Stichting Brein, a Dutch-based organization funded by copyright-holder groups. It said Mininova was inciting users to infringe copyrights and profiting from infringement by advertising on the site.

"The court didn't agree with Mininova's argument that it was impossible for it to find and remove torrents that point to copyrighted materials," the ruling said.

Unlike The Pirate Bay, Mininova was already removing files when it received a takedown notice from copyright holders.

But the court said that wasn't good enough, and Mininova should assume that all commercial media works are copyrighted.

"The court believes it's generally known that commercially made films, games, music and TV series are copyrighted and that these works are only copyright-free in exceptional cases," the ruling said.

In a ruling late Saturday that fell in line with similar pronouncements by the military-backed regime, the high court said that Zelaya will not be allowed to return to power, and "cannot avoid having to submit to established procedures of the penal process" should he return to Honduras.

Zelaya was ousted from power in a June 28 military-backed coup and replaced with interim leader Roberto Micheletti.

The court decision also accused Zelaya of "crimes against the government, treason against the nation, abuse of power" and other misdeeds, as it affirmed the legitimacy of Micheletti's government.

Micheletti's government had been installed as part of a lawful "constitutional succession," the high court found.

In a ruling published Friday, the Federal Criminal Tribunal rejected an appeal by the Duvalier family, which wants to reclaim the money. It can now appeal the case to Switzerland's highest court.

The government says the Duvalier family has failed to prove that the money stashed in Swiss accounts is of legitimate origin.

Many in Haiti consider that money stolen from public funds before Duvalier was ousted in 1986. Duvalier, who is believed to be living in exile in France, has always denied that.

The court said the Duvalier family had diverted public funds into Swiss accounts through a Liechtenstein foundation that amounted to a "criminal organization."

The accounts in Switzerland have been blocked since 2002.

Switzerland has traditionally been a favorite location for dictators' money because of its banking secrecy rules. But reforms over the past two decades have made it harder to hide money in Switzerland and the country has returned hundreds of millions of francs (dollars) to countries in Africa, the Philippines and elsewhere.