Merck Threatens Merck With Legal Action Over Facebook URL 115
angry tapir writes with an excerpt from a Techworld article: "Germany's Merck KGaA has threatened legal action after it said it lost its Facebook page apparently to rival Merck & Co. in the U.S., though it has yet to identify defendants in the case. In a filing before the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Merck said it intends to initiate an action based on the apparent takeover of its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/merck by its similarly-named but unrelated competitor, Merck & Co."
Not unrelated (Score:5, Informative)
Merck was a single German company prior to WWI, their North American assets were seized by the US government in 1917 and is now Merck & Co. What remained in Germany is now Merck KGaA.
Re:Not unrelated (Score:5, Funny)
So the US liberated them?
Re:Not unrelated (Score:5, Funny)
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So not a fair comparison. Tibet didn't attempt world domination. Twice. Plus, WWI was pretty much the first time chemical weapons were used in a big way in a large war. Forcefully adopting groups like that was pretty normal in those days under those situations. Besides, unlike Tibet, Merck & Co is doing pretty darn well.
In any case, according to Merck & Co, it wasn't the actual page but a "vanity URL" and that the mix-up is an administrative error on Facebook's part. I wouldn't take them at their wo
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Only if they were buddhism believers at the time with beliefs about the frugality of possessions.
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So Trademark law isn't designed to take World War I into account?
Ya know, it was kind of a big deal.
Patents were affected by WW1 also (Score:5, Interesting)
So Trademark law isn't designed to take World War I into account? Ya know, it was kind of a big deal.
Neither is patent law. Bayer lost aspirin. The US Army stopped paying royalties to Mauser over the "infringing" M1903 Springfield rifle.
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So Trademark law isn't designed to take World War I into account? Ya know, it was kind of a big deal.
Neither is patent law. Bayer lost aspirin. The US Army stopped paying royalties to Mauser over the "infringing" M1903 Springfield rifle.
I recall Mauser had their patent-enforcers go and "confiscate" the offending knock-offs. I don't think that went very well.
I guess it all depends on what you pirate.
Re:Patents were affected by WW1 also (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not what you pirate, but who sanctions the piracy.
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It's not what you pirate, but who sanctions the piracy.
This must be the first ever occurrence on the internet where the use of the word "pirating" for "IP infringement" is apt.
(and yeah I know that it is lazy to use "IP" for all kinds of copyrights, patents, etc...)
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Or when you pirate. Like Addison charging people to see copies of Georges Méliès "A trip to the moon".
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Reminds me about accusations that part of the UAV software was either pirated or incorrectly used open source. Looks like this is nothing new.
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Reminds me about accusations that part of the UAV software was either pirated or incorrectly used open source. Looks like this is nothing new.
I'm not familiar with the specific case that you refer to but keep in mind that the GPL doesn't require that derived code be given to anyone who asks. Only to those you distribute binaries to. If the derived work is strictly for use within an organization then distribution need not occur. So if a US government contractor uses GPL'd code in a UAV while acting as an employee/agent of the gov't then there is no violation as the military, border patrol, coast guard, fbi, etc use the UAV. If developed as a third
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It would be more accurate to say that the WWI seizures of intangible personal property assets didn't take the internet into account.
Which, you know, isn't all that surprising.
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In other words, Facebook being on American soil, this was just a delayed seizure of North American assets?
Re:Not unrelated (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not unrelated (Score:5, Informative)
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Having a subsidiary in Ireland does not make the entire company Irish.
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Could be 0%, could be 100%. Makes no difference.
Re:Not unrelated (Score:5, Informative)
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Any particular reason the US didn't give it back after the war or is this just one of those winner takes all type things?
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Here I was thinking they were trying to sue themselves out of business, kind of like a race to the bottom. How disappointing to find out they're separate entities.
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I'm sure the American lawyers will say.
They already have a name. No one objects to them making a KGaA facebook page.
In fact, we even registered the KGaA.xxx domain name just so that we could give it to them, not that they even appreciated our gift -- those ungrateful Germans.
Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien (Score:3)
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Huh. Confused me a bit, as I previously thought the German side decided to rename themselves as EMD (for Emanuel Merck Darmstadt). Didn't realize the new name only applied when they're operating in the U.S.
Many of us who've worked in laboratories are quite familar with EMD, they're a major supplier of chemicals to the pharmaceutical industry (and other chemical industries). I'll be there are bottles of stuff labeled EMD in some of Merck's (U.S.) facilities right now.
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Which means they are unrelated.
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Which means they are unrelated
No, it doesn't.
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Not the only people that happened to, either. Ask Bayer.
Light on info (Score:5, Informative)
Merck Germany says it had "an agreement" with Facebook for the name. Later Merck America was running the page. No where in TFA does it says Merck G is suing Merck A, only Facebook. Once again TFS screws up the headline on TFA.
Re:Light on info (Score:4, Informative)
But, just as FB support multiple "John Smith" pages, there are multiple Merck pages. Merck Germany [facebook.com] still has one, with posts going back more than a year, but which was pretty inactive. The US Merck [facebook.com] has it's own page. So, maybe the Germans are just clueless or confused. Or, maybe it's because the simple link - http://www.facebook.com/Merck [facebook.com] is linked to the US one (the full URI to the US one permanently redirects to the simple one), but it used to be linked to the German one. It seems to me that's something FB would have done - I doubt a user can control that. And, FB may have done that simply to point to the more active and popular "Merck." The US site has had 30 posts since September, the German one, 19 in a year and a half.
This just in... (Score:5, Informative)
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Easy solution: auction the name every year for a 1-year license. Facebook wins, the auction winner wins, everybody wins!
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"Facebook Inc said on Monday that it made a mistake in letting Merck & Co take over a page on the social networking website from its German rival Merck KGaA." - IBTimes [ibtimes.com]
Notice it also says:
Facebook plans to make the URL www.facebook.com/merck unavailable for use until both Mercks agree which company may use it. The companies may request other URLs and maintain presences on Facebook.
Sounds more like they did want to take it away.
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This just illustrates the folly of all the companies co-operating in the creation of a walled-garden internet controlled by a single company, who often has no understanding or care about individual company's needs or desires. The more companies jump on board the idea of Facebook being their primary internet presence, (like many don't put their URL on adverts, they put their Facebook page) the more they are handing over to Facebook key control of their business.
This is the kind of business model that compa
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No where in TFA does it says Merck G is suing Merck A, only Facebook. Once again TFS screws up the headline on TFA.
No where in TFA does it says Merck KGaA is suing Facebook.
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No where in TFA does it says Merck G is suing Merck A, only Facebook. Once again TFS screws up the headline on TFA.
No where in TFA does it says Merck KGaA is suing Facebook.
Actually reading TFA?
You must be new here.
I know my opinion won't be popular here... (Score:1)
As I know most here are hoping Merck wins this case.
I,however, hope Merck wins this case.
I'm with Merck on this (Score:5, Funny)
I hope they take Merck to the cleaners while defending their IP.
Is that really an URL? (Score:1, Insightful)
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Out of curiosity, what exactly do you think URL means?
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While it is clearly not a FQDN, does an address in someone else's domain count as an URL? It's not like they really own it...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator [wikipedia.org]
The term "URL" is not in any way related to the concept of ownership.
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People share stuff with each other on social media sites. Companies want to get in on that - if someone shares info about their products, that's advertising - fairly cheap advertising. On top of that - this is coming from people's friends, so it's probably much more effective advertising - it is more likely to be read, and more likely to match the receiver's interests.
It seems fairly stupid for a company not to have a Facebook presence under these circumstances.
My Summary/ Submission : (Score:2)
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But didn't you know corporations are people too.
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Oh, that must be why they want to have a presence on facebook, a social networking site.. Gee, can't wait to friend such a corporation, do you think it will come to my birthday party?
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Well I hope they only let companies join which are at least 14 years old.
Re:Companies suing companies? But, but........ (Score:4, Informative)
For the record, the "McDonalds hot coffee" thing was NOT an example of lawsuit abuse, even though it's commonly trotted out as an example of it.
It's more an example of "McDonalds screwed up, then refused to do anything to make it right, then was sued and lost".
More on it can be found here [lectlaw.com] and if you think she wasn't that badly hurt, check out the picture of the burns here [pflanz.me] (warning: not safe for lunch).
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Your link, to a self-serving article by the "Consumer Attorneys of California," does nothing to support your claim that this was anything other than an unreasonable abuse of the legal process.
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> Coffee is often made with boiling water
Coffee should *never" be made with boiling water as that scalds the beans.
Re:Companies suing companies? But, but........ (Score:4, Insightful)
So the point stands - 185 degrees shouldn't be an unexpected serving temperature.
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The same article goes on to say "About 200 degrees Fahrenheit is the optimal temperature to make coffee," and the National Coffee Association [ncausa.org] agrees
Ah, its talking about the american version, not a real espresso made by forcing boiling water through the grounds. It means ideal if you want to avoid the real coffee favour.
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French fries are made with boiling oil, but I would expect the final product to be served at a temperature that's safe to eat.
Much like I'd expect coffee to be served at a temperature that's safe to drink.
Re:Companies suing companies? But, but........ (Score:5, Informative)
185F is reasonable for the temperature the coffee is prepared at, not the temperature at which it is served. It should be served closer to 160F. McDonald's was overheating it so that it would stay hot longer (allowing them to serve it for a longer period, and thus make fewer pots over the day).
Furthermore, the woman only asked for $20k, barely enough to cover her medical expenses and lost work hours. She wasn't being greedy at all. It was McDonald's choice to risk a jury trial, and they paid for it. Losing a jury trial should be more expensive than settling, otherwise corporations have no incentive to ever settle with us comparatively short-lived humans.
Re:Companies suing companies? But, but........ (Score:5, Interesting)
Bunn (maker of most of the commercial coffee brewing machines in the U.S.) recommends the coffee be held at 175-185F [slashdot.org]. This is the temperature when it comes out of the serving machine (it is held in the serving machine prior), and the temperature setting which was at issue in the lawsuit. It is the same temperature used by restaurants nationwide, including Starbucks.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit surveyed coffee temperatures at other restaurants nearby, and stated "Other establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures." Note the wording. They didn't give the average temp, nor a range of temps. They simply stated that some restaurants sold their coffee at a much lower temperature. If they had found that McDonalds coffee was unusually hot, they would have stated something more like "most establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures." That they didn't indicates it's just deceptive wording used to take a survey which didn't support their case, and made it appear as if it did.
McDonalds set the temperature that high because people complained about it getting too cold by the time they got home or to work. After the lawsuit they tried lowering the temperature, but too many people complained and they raised it again. Today, McDonalds follows Bunn's 175-185 F recommendation. The lawsuit changed nothing about how coffee is served.
And how do you figure hotter coffee leads to brewing fewer pots each day? These machines are temperature regulated. If you set it at 185F, it will keep the coffee at 185F all day. If you set it at 165F, it'll keep the coffee at 165F all day. You don't brew it, use it until it cools, then throw the rest out once it gets too cool. If anything, hotter coffee would lead to brewing more coffee, as the water and aromatics will evaporate more quickly at higher temperature.
If you take the number of burns reported from spilled McDonalds coffee, and divide it by the number of cups of coffee McDonalds sold in the same time period of those spills, you'll arrive at an accident rate for McDonalds coffee. If you then compare that accident rate to other accident rates, you discover a funny thing. If you drive 5 miles round trip to buy your McDonalds coffee, you are actually more likely to die in an auto accident buying your cup of coffee, than you are to be burned from spilling it on yourself.
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what's it like being a retard?
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I take a hammer and accidentally hit my thumb and break it. Does Craftsman owe me the money for the medical expense since their hammer was used?
Absolutely, YES: if and only if you incurred the injury on Craftsman's property.
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an unreasonable abuse of the legal process.
The temperature of the coffee is what I would call a red herring. It matters not what temperature the coffee was served at... what matters is where the victim was injured. If she tripped on her own shoelaces in the restaurant, and was injured in a fall, McDonald's is culpable. If the temp of the coffee was only 108F, and she incurred her injury on the premises (which she did), McDonald's is culpable for damages. The facts of the actual case are clear that she sustained a rather bad injury on McDonald's prem
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Sorry, but that simply isn't the state of the law -- certainly not in America, at least. The general theory for slip-and-fall cases is one of negligence: did the defendant fail to meet the standard of behavior that a reasonable person in similar circumstances would take, and if so, did that conduct cause the plaintiff's injury. If not, no liability.
The Hot Coffee case operated on a more plaintiff-friendly theory: in product-liability cases, liability is "strict." That is, courts will not ask whether the sta
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And thanks to this logic, consumers all over the world are now regarded as little children. Warnings are placed everywhere. You are not allowed any initiative anymore, all in fear of a lawsuit. So much money going to waste. And all that because some prick wanted to extort McDonalds.
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Warning: Coffee is hot.
Warning: Ice cream is cold.
Warning: Water is wet. (Oops, EU says you can't say that.)
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(Oops, EU says you can't say that.)
No, as I understand it, you can't claim that water can prevent dehydration. I don't think they stop you from saying that it's wet. (yet?)
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Warning: Water is wet. (Oops, EU says you can't say that.)
you might want to research that story a bit further than just the initial headline. It turned out the claim was that bottled water is a medicine against dehydration (a medical condition). Not all forms of dehydration are cured by drinking water, and in some situations it is even harmful to the patient. So common sense prevailed and the claim was struck down.
Now if you want to have an argument about the quality of British press (who first ran the story), that's an entirely different topic.
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The old lady asking for $20,000 to cover the medical bills for her nasty burns was extorting?
Um, why a warning? (Score:2)
Why is a warning necessary? Is it not common knowledge that coffee is hot?
This is the kind of thinking that leads to warning labels like "do not set ladder in mud", "do not use hairdryer while bathing" and similar nonsense. There should be a standard of reasonableness - this has gone lost. Now we have this wonderful feedback cycle going: The courts allow frankly frivolous lawsuits to proceed, people play courts like a lottery, so whenever something bad happens people look around for deep pockets to sue, law
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Yeah, there are lots of silly warning labels. And they wouldn't have helped in this case. This is more a problem of "The coffee was too hot, and the containers were defective by design". What she asked for was fair. I'm not sure that what the jury awarded was fair, but it got reduced anyway. She should probably have been awarded twice or three times her expenses (including time), because since McDonalds refused to pay reasonable damages without a fight she was put to considerable extra time and expense
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Your link, to a self-serving article by the "Consumer Attorneys of California," does nothing to support your claim that this was anything other than an unreasonable abuse of the legal process.
I could link to the Hot Coffee Documentary [hotcoffeethemovie.com], but of course since the incident is a large part of the documentary, I guess that's "self-serving" too and therefore is also to be dismissed out of hand. Unfortunately, being a video, it's a bit hard to cite as people can't quickly read it like they can an article.
Or the Wikipedia page [wikipedia.org], though anybody can edit wikipedia, so it should be dismissed too, right? (To be fair, the wikipedia page doesn't really say that the lawsuit was or wasn't valid -- but it does gi
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You are perfectly right and the moron who modded you flaimbait should be stopped from further modding.
180F is below breing temperature! It is a very reasonable temperature for coffee. If you carefully sip, with drawig in some air, you even can start drinking at this temperature. (This is 82.22C, coffee is usually brewed at 85C - 90C)
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You must be a happy camper now that all coffee mugs have "Warning hot!" written on them. I cannot believe mankind survived so long without these warnings, they are essential to our existance.
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McDonalds did not screw up. Their coffee was not, and is not, served at a higher temperature than the coffee from practically any other establishment. The hottest coffee I've ever been served was from a Starbucks (primarily the reason they no longer get my business).
That old lady screwed up.
Even an idiot knows that you can't hold a soft styrofoam cup between your knees and expect it to not deform when you remove the rigid top. Or, if you do, you've gotta be REALLY DAMN CAREFUL to squeeze your knees toget
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Yeah. She shoulda gotten a Darwin award.
I don't mean to dis her injury - bad burns do a lot more than just hurt like a sumbitch.
McDs in a neighborly fashion should've paid her bills, and the judge should've dismissed the case.
Instead, McDucks rolled over, the sueage floodgates opened, lawyers got an even worse rep, and judges and juries appeared even more clueless than usual.
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You left out crooked companies got a very nice PR story in the public conciousness for passing tort reform.
Cries for tort reform happen everyday using that little old lady as an example. and everyday someone has to post the pics and insert the words THIRD FUCKING DEGREE BURNS.
Believe me, even if mc D's has to put a label on a coffee cup and pay some little old lady and her lawyer, the meme of "frivilous lawsuits" in the public mind which is used to take away every american's right to sue for damages is wort
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Coffee is supposed to be served at a temperature that will cause only minor burns if spilled. McDonalds deliberately put theirs customers at risk of serious burns to save money.
You know, people often complain around here that "if corporations are people, why aren't they subject to criminal law". Well, that's what "gross negligence" is. Had McD's served their coffe at the more reasonable temp that most everyone else does, this would maybe have been ordinary negligence, and the lady would likely have gotte
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FTFY. Of course, this being McDonald's, that's sort of a moot point...
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No, coffee is usually served far above the temperature where it will taste good, as people don't usually drink it where it's served (if you're loudly slurping your coffee because its too hot to drink normally, that's not the proper temperature, and you're a jerk).
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The hottest coffee I've ever been served was from a Starbucks (primarily the reason they no longer get my business).
Donald Trump is that you???
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No reasonable person would expect coffee sold at a drive-through to be hot enough to cause serious burns, and no sensible person would knowingly buy such coffee. Liquids in cars are liable to spill now and then, no matter how much care you take.
By way of analogy, if you paved a footpath with broken glass, and someone fell down and seriously injured themselves, would it be their own fault for falling down or yours for using broken glass? After all, everybody knows that care must be taken to avoid falling d
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A more apt analogy would be a beach.
If I opened a beach, and someone cut their foot on a seashell because they were running barefoot, there's no way I should be held liable. Seashells are known by all reasonable people to exist on beaches, and precautions should be taken to not cut your feet on them. If a person fails to take reasonable responsibility for their own safety, others should not be responsible to take up the slack.
It's not like the coffee was hot and other coffee is not hot. All coffee is hot
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If all coffee is hot enough to cause third degree burns (I'm not sure I believe this) then it should not be sold to people in cars. (It probably shouldn't be sold in styrofoam cups, either, even in-shop.) Don't you guys have any sort of OSH legislation?
Assuming for the sake of argument that this *is* true, people wouldn't buy coffee from the drive-through if they knew about it; they do, so they don't. So in the beach analogy it would be as if (almost) nobody had ever heard of seashells, and didn't know
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Water over 150 F will cause third degree burns. Most coffee is served ~160-165 F. Most coffee is held at ~170-175 F.
The McDonald's coffee in this case was held at 180-185 F.
The lady got burnt worse, and faster, than she would have today had she ordered from a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts -- but she still would have gotten badly burnt if she tried to pull that stunt.
People DO know coffee is that hot, and DO buy coffee through drive-through windows. Every day! If they DIDN'T know about it, they would be in
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You hold it in your hand, right, that will work. Because cars never have to brake suddenly or get run into from behind.
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Well, I read over the articel you have linked and stumbel over this:
This is utter nonsense. Coffee with 140 degrees (Fahrenheit) is consid
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Just curious, where did you get your medical degree? Because clearly your internet opinion is better than those of the emergency room doctors that saw her just after she burned herself with the coffee.
Also, where did you get your statistics degree? I'm curious since your analysis of coffee serving temperature isn't backed up with a reference to a study, so I assume you completed the study yourself.
Oh, and where did you get your law degree? Since you don't think any of the arguments make sense, I assume y
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I wrote from my european stand of view.
I don't need a statistics or a degree to assert you that coffee here is served hotter than 80 Degrees Celsius (That was the 140 Fahrenheit IIRC).
After all coffee is usually made fresh per cup and if it is "filter coffee" which is prepared ahead it is also far above the temperature mentioend in this articles.
The typical brewing temperature is around 90 Degrees Celsius. You know, that you can read on wikipedia ... its the reccomended temperature to get the best "solution
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Wrap your hand in skin-tight clothing, then pour some more coffee on your hand. Make sure you're strapped in so that you can't take the cloth off for 30 seconds. Also, don't use your hand - the skin there is tougher. Use your genitals. Then compare photos.
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Already diod that on my legs. As I said: either the coffee was much hotter than claimed in the article, or it was much to cold to cause such burns. I would assume the burns are not burns but the result of mistreatment.