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."

Trademarks?

[Dexter Herbivore]

Fantastic, so now Facebook has the right of determining valid trademarks, on top of all the personal data it collects. I may be cynical here, but I get the feeling that 'playing nice' will involve the largest payment in combination with the best legal team.

This is awesome

[onyxruby]

Two companies have just been bitch slapped for getting uppity about a common name in world market. How many other inane intellectual property disputes could have been resolved or prevented by doing this?

Re:Difficult problem

[CmdrPony]

I get the joke, but it's actually really easy one. It obviously belongs to the German company that originally registered it on Facebook. Why does US companies think they can thump on everyone else?

Re:Difficult problem

[NotSanguine]

It just goes to show what an agreement with Facebook is worth.

Translation:

[forkfail]

Letting the bidding begin!

Re:Trademarks?

[Alwin Henseler]

Makes one wonder what a Facebook account is really worth to a company (or pop group, or artist, whatever). On the one hand, the option of gaining & holding customers, and do lots of PR through the social network, on the other hand the possibility that at any time, if someone with same name (competitor?) creates a dispute about it, Facebook might close the account for no good reason.

Who needs hackers for a DoS attack when Facebook could do the job for you?

Re:Difficult problem

[Attila Dimedici]

At this point, it does not obviously belong to the German company because we do not know how control ended up in the hands of the U.S. company. It is possible that someone with the German company who had been designated to Facebook as the "administrator" did so. Obviously, it is more likely that someone at Facebook turned administrative control over to the U.S. company (probably because they did not realize there were two pharmaceutical companies with the same name and assumed that the representative of the U.S. company was the representative of the company that originally registered the name--it is even possible that the representative of the U.S. company did not realize that they were taking control from the German company when they did this).

Re:Trademarks?

[Sir_Sri]

This happens a LOT in the software business. Google is trying to sort out which maps to show to which people based on 'official' boundaries (which may or may not reflect actual boundaries, and some boundaries are not filed with the UN publicly so who the hell knows where they are). I worked on a game recently where we were trying to figure out the official border between france and germany at a particular point in time, the area in question has changed hands something like 17 times. 6 guys in a basement were asking very serious questions like the legal status of egypt and sudan under Britian (and how to model that?) the legal status of Taiwan (and whether that meant our game would get banned in China, and whether or not we cared). There are lots of messy legal areas you sometimes have to pick something and role with it.

Facebook only has one facebook.com/yourname url to give out, and honestly, they don't want to be involved in the fight over who is more Merck than the other, that's why they're telling them both to sort it out themselves. Facebook has no idea who has a more valid claim to the name, and, this is of course muddied by them being in separate areas. Facebook might have to oblige the US trademark for the US branch of the company in the US, and the european version in Europe or just have to oblige the US version or, well, who the hell knows? There's no winning answer here. They may have signed a contract, but my suspicion is that the contract would only be valid if Merck (gmbh) was the legal trademark holder, which, depending on the circumstances, it might not be.

Re:Difficult problem

[Cajun Hell]

It obviously belongs to the German company that originally registered it on Facebook

No, it obviously belongs to Facebook (or at least as much as facebook.com belongs to Facebook, except that isn't quite as clear). Whatever Facebook decides to do with it, is defined as the right answer.

Re:What's all this Facebook craze anyway?

[forkfail]

For a lot of people, Facebook is the web.

And having someone "like" a company means the opportunity to get them to read several bits of advertisement a day - voluntarily, without the popups that so annoy.

Not saying it's a good thing, just that it's the way things are at this time.

Re:Difficult problem

[Canazza]

So you're suggesting a Disambiguation page?

Re:Trademarks?

[Stormy Dragon]

Yes, but you can put up a billboard and refuse to let Disney by space on it. Facebook isn't using the trademark improperly, merely refusing to let either side use it. This makes perfect sense for Facebook. Whichever one it would have sided with, the other would have sued them. If it lets neither use the name, there's nothing they can do.

Re:Trademarks?

[Sez Zero]

There's no winning answer here.

Sure there is: the winning answer is to not use Facebook.

Re:Trademarks?

[Sir_Sri]

Not for either of these two companies. There are 800 million facebook users, 400 million of which are accessed daily. If you want an advertising base, that would be it.

When you're in the customer service business you aim to connect to your customers how *they* want to connect, not how you think they should be connecting to you.

Re:Trademarks still exist

[mr1911]

Except that Facebook is still private property. They don't have to let you promote your trademark on their site any more than a company could force you to paint their logo on the side of your house.

Denying both companies access to the name on Facebook is a completely viable and legal means to not infringe on any trademark.

You may also want to brush up on trademarks a bit. It is possible to have the same trademark for different industries, and one does not trump the other. Say for example, I have a registered trademark for Apple toothbrushes. I am free to promote my trademark, even if Apple computers doesn't like it. Granted it does get even murkier when industries are similar across international boundaries, but one trumping the other is still a tough argument to make.

In the end it is very funny that Facebook basically give a timeout to two companies acting like two year old children.

Re:Difficult problem

[Anonymous Coward]

That seems a likely explanation to me. Never try to attribute malice to an action that can best be explained by simple stupidity. Seems that FB needs to learn a thing or two about what a contract is.

Re:This is awesome

[pclminion]

So rather than responding by acknowledging that they were wrong in taking the address away from the German Merck, they act like they're in the wrong for complaining.

As parent of a two- and four-year-old, I agree with the strategy. Complaining makes you a baby. I don't care which one of them did it/started it/took it/broke it, they work it out between themselves. When I hear screaming from the other room over a toy that toy is gone for the rest of the day, no questions no interrogations no "getting to the bottom of it." I don't give a shit what happened. Screaming == toys are gone.