Facebook Denies Disputed Page To Both Mercks

itwbennett writes "In follow-up to yesterday's story about how Merck in Germany is threatening legal action to take its vanity Facebook URL back from Merck U.S., Facebook apologized for its 'administrative error' in reassigning the URL but said that if the two companies can't play nice, no one will get the URL."

That's a rather stupid "solution"

[tomhudson]

So, Facebook screws up, and now it's up to the original URL holder to "play nice" and let someone else squat with them? Keep it up Facebook - you're just giving us yet another reason to show that you don't "get it" on so many levels.

What next - people with their names as facebook urls having to "play nice" with others with the same name who come later?

Re:Difficult problem

[NotSanguine]

Oh, I'm sure that Facebook stuck to the letter of the EULA, which, without doubt, says that Facebook can do whatever they want now, and if you argue about it, they can change the EULA retroactively at will such that there's no question at all about the matter.

Apparently, the German Merck entered into an agreement with FB in March 2010 (cf. Original Story/a) [techworld.com.au]

Re:Difficult problem

[Tanktalus]

Revenue stream, yes. Pepsi pay for a "Coke" vanity URL on FB? Unlikely. Courts have already determined some rights to trademark names in URLs - though Pepsi still has to pay the regular registration fee to use "pepsi.com", a competitor attempting to misuse their trademark would likely lose the domain in a court battle, as has happened in the past.

Their lawyers wouldn't let them even try it.

Ehmm, no.

[Ecuador]

The company names are distinguishable - Merck KGaA and Merck and Co. Given that neither is called just "Merck", it makes sense to make them use distinguishable pages, probably with their full company name.

"KGaA" is a German acronym for "Kommanditgesellschaft auf Aktien" which is sort of a "limited company/partnership" or something like that. So, the NAME of the company is just "Merck", with the KGaA designation defining the type of the company. Since you would always say the name of the shoe company is "Nike", when officially they are "Nike, Inc.", I would suggest it is the same with the "German" Merck. Moreover, the "US" Merck's full designation seems to be "Merck and Co., Inc.", you can't be pushing for dropping "Inc"s but keeping "KGaA"s just because in your narrow worldview you recognize the former and not the latter.
So, the German company is the only one that is just "Merck".
Now, what facebook should do or not do about it, I don't know and I really don't care.