Meta Is Suing Meta For Naming Itself Meta (theverge.com) 98
An installation-art company called META (or Meta.is) announced Tuesday that it will be suing Meta (or Facebook) for trademark violation, alleging that Zuckerberg's name change violated the smaller company's established brand. The Verge reports: "On October 28, 2021, Facebook seized our META mark and name, which we put our blood, sweat, and tears into building for over twelve years," reads a post on the smaller company's site. "Today, after eight months of trying to negotiate with Facebook in good faith to no avail, we were left with no choice but to file a lawsuit against them."
Much of the case hinges on Facebook's many privacy scandals, which Meta.is argues has made it impossible to share the name. "Meta can no longer provide goods and services under the META mark," the complaint argues, "because consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Meta's goods and services emanate from Facebook and that Meta is associated with the toxicity that is inextricably linked with Facebook."
Meta.is holds a valid trademark for the name but may still be facing an uphill battle in court, given the broad range of trademark applications Facebook has made since the name change became official -- including separate marks for messaging, social networks, and financial services. There are also a number of trademarks claiming the Meta name for non-tech products, including a hard seltzer and manufacturer of prosthetic limbs.
Much of the case hinges on Facebook's many privacy scandals, which Meta.is argues has made it impossible to share the name. "Meta can no longer provide goods and services under the META mark," the complaint argues, "because consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Meta's goods and services emanate from Facebook and that Meta is associated with the toxicity that is inextricably linked with Facebook."
Meta.is holds a valid trademark for the name but may still be facing an uphill battle in court, given the broad range of trademark applications Facebook has made since the name change became official -- including separate marks for messaging, social networks, and financial services. There are also a number of trademarks claiming the Meta name for non-tech products, including a hard seltzer and manufacturer of prosthetic limbs.
Is success making Zuck stupid? (Score:4, Interesting)
What this story reminds me of is a friend of mine who owned a kind of generic domain. It was the name of his small programming company, but they wanted that domain so badly that he described the sale as the best investment he ever made. He was also smart about the timing. But I just looked at it and the domain is in a semi-parked near dormant status. Whoever bought the domain wasn't so clever about that side of the transaction, eh?
You'd think Facebook would have checked carefully before the name change. The way Exxon did--but it still turned out there was some kind of conflict (but I've forgotten the details now).
Re:Is success making Zuck stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly if you're a large company with a lot of lawyers on retainer... You just don't care..
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That's the beauty of our legal system here. Fees are calculated and paid AFTER the verdict, not any moment sooner. And loser pays all, automatically.
In other words, the power positions are exactly reversed. If you're a large corporation you can't win a long legal battle. Either you lose the case or even if you win, the small company goes "poof" after the legal fees are paid.
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Where is "here"? If you mean the United States, then no, fees are not automatically assigned to the loser. Winner has to ask for fees and they have to be granted which typically only happens if the plaintiff's case was unreasonable garbage from day one.
If you mean "somewhere not the United States" then please reply where as I find that interesting.
Re:Is success making Zuck stupid? (Score:5, Informative)
Where is "here"? If you mean the United States, then no, fees are not automatically assigned to the loser. Winner has to ask for fees and they have to be granted which typically only happens if the plaintiff's case was unreasonable garbage from day one.
If you mean "somewhere not the United States" then please reply where as I find that interesting.
I quote: "In the field of law and economics, the English rule (capitalized as English Rule in some jurisdictions) is a rule controlling assessment of lawyers' fees arising out of litigation. The English rule provides that the party who loses in court pays the other party's legal costs ... The English rule is followed by nearly every Western democracy other than the United States."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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It's an oversimplification, at least in England itself the judge decides who will pay costs and while this frequently means that the loser is ordered to pay costs of both parties (as the loser is found to be in the wrong so it's their fault that the action was necessary) that doesn't have to be the case. The judge may order both parties to bear their own costs and in extreme cases the judge may even order contemptuous damages e.g. the winner receives one penny in damages and it's them that has to pay the co
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In the US, if you are rich, you can sue a poorer person for the purpose of harassment, intimidation or blackmail or just out of pure vindictiveness because the person you are harassing will have to pay the exorbitant costs themselves whereas in the English system the odds are pretty high you'll have to eat those costs themselves which neutralizes the one thing that makes the US justice system a purpose designed blackmailing and bullying tool for the wealthy.
I'm not going to say the US system is superior, but it's not alone in the rich vs poor problem. The cost of retaining a good lawyer/barrister anywhere still keeps poorer people from bringing suit or being able to provide as quality of a defense. Sure, there are conditional fee arrangements, but those exist in the US as well.
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And proving it was garbage often requires surviving the lawsuit long enough to avoid going bankrupt in the first place.
AND THE PLAINTIFF USUALLY KNOWS THAT!
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Facebook could lose here. It's not without precedent. Remember Microsoft's SkyDrive? They lost the battle for the trademark and had to go through an enormous rebrand to the inferior name of OneDrive (which is itself now an anachronism being that Balmer's "One Microsoft" strategy is 10 years out of date)
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Unlikely. "Meta" is a common word. The prospect of a bare mark applying outside the owner's very narrow business area is minuscule. The real risk for Facebook is that the mark will be applied very narrowly for them too, should another company decide to start calling themselves meta this or meta that.
Re:Is success making Zuck stupid? (Score:5, Insightful)
You'd think Facebook would have checked carefully before the name change.
You can bet they did, assessed the threat from the smaller company and then budgeted that much money for the legal costs to bury them in lawsuits until they give up.
Thus illustrating how toxic Facebook can be.
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-or- and I am going to go out on a limb here someone did a search and found the other Meta was some kind of art installation and rightly assumed there was no way other parties would confuse or conflate them. Especially because they don't have much in common, not line of business, not logo, not location etc.
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This is a great point. Facebook decided no one could be confused.
And of course they're right--the art company has no case.
Re:Is success making Zuck stupid? (Score:5, Informative)
This is a great point. Facebook decided no one could be confused. And of course they're right--the art company has no case.
Uh, no, you've got it backwards. The original Meta isn't an "art company". If I understand correctly, it's an augmented reality developer that combines art and hardware to create an immersive experience, both for art and for business demos and stuff. This is literally the exact business that Facebook wants to go into, and the stated reason for changing their name to Meta.
Based on that, Facebook is likely to get their a**es handed to them on a silver platter. They literally stole the name of an existing augmented reality company because that name better reflected their intent to move into the augmented reality space. Facebook then compounded that abuse by using the trademark not just for their augmented reality team, but for the entire company, filing for the Meta trademark in a wide range of other related and unrelated spaces, thus ensuring that even if the augmented reality portion of Facebook's usage were found to be infringing, the value of the mark and the loyalty associated with it in the augmented reality space became zero.
This should be an open-and-shut case, and the egregiousness of Facebook's actions is severe enough that a judge will likely vacate Facebook's right to the use of the Meta name even in areas where the original entity did not hold a trademark. I don't see any way for Facebook to win this. Their only realistic options are to lose everything, keep appealing until the other side runs out of money, or settle out of court for whatever the original Meta wants.
I also wonder if metaIO (which is wholly owned by Apple) has any trademarks on Meta in the context of augmented reality. If so, that could bite Facebook even harder.
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Thanks for the background information. It sounds like you've already done enough research on the topic to make several lawyers rich. Glad to see you were modded Informative for it.
Not sure how much I concur, though I do agree that Facebook is reaching deep and really wants the "idea" of meta to belong to Zuck. Which is kind of amusing when you look at the origin of the word. Nothing to do with metaphysics in any sense we now regard as metaphysical. Just where the two volumes of Aristotle wound up getting fi
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This should be an open-and-shut case, and the egregiousness of Facebook's actions is severe enough that a judge will likely vacate Facebook's right to the use of the Meta name even in areas where the original entity did not hold a trademark. I don't see any way for Facebook to win this.
Brilliant post - thanks for the information.
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I personally hope that Zuck gets Fuc&ed. He was a jerk to start with and he's only grown worse.
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You'd think Facebook would have checked carefully before the name change.
You can bet they did, assessed the threat from the smaller company and then budgeted that much money for the legal costs to bury them in lawsuits until they give up.
Thus illustrating how toxic any large corporation can be.
I tidied that up just a hair. :) Facebook fits into that category, hands-down.
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True that.
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You'd think Facebook would have checked carefully before the name change.
You can bet they did, assessed the threat from the smaller company and then budgeted that much money for the legal costs to bury them in lawsuits until they give up.
Thus illustrating how toxic Facebook can be.
I'm not sure that approach is in any way unique to Facebook; sounds like large corporation playbook 101.
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...or alternatively (Score:3)
Thus illustrating how toxic Facebook can be.
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Not to defend Facebook and all their evil doings, but companies can use the same trademark name as long as there is not a likelihood of confusion. Most of the time if the two companies are in different industries, one is local and the other is national, etc. For example Acme Brick and Acme Supermarkets can both claim the trademark "Acme".
Meta.is will have to make a case that Facebook using the same name will cause confusion for their customers. However Meta.is is timely in their filing; some of these lawsui
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It is not that easy.
It depends e.g. on how well known the brand is.
You wont have any chance making a new company/brand selling doughnuts called Coca or Microsoft or Facebook.
Re:Is success making Zuck stupid? (Score:4, Interesting)
Look into HarvardConnection. Its the project Zuckerberg pretended to help while actually stealing all their work, and launched a competing product Facebook. He stalled the rest of his team for months pretending to be coding (even having them over for a meeting where he drew code up on a whiteboard). Then the team found out after he launched that he never worked on their project, only Facebook. The Winklevoss's sued and settled.
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Eduardo Saverin wasn't directly involved with Facebook for long: During the summer of 2004, when Mark moved to Palo Alto to work on Facebook full time, Eduardo took a high-paying internship at Lehman Brothers in New York. While Mark was still at Harvard, however, Eduardo appears to have bankrolled Facebook's earliest capital expenses, thus becoming its initial investor.
In January, however, Mark told a friend that "Eduardo is paying for my servers." Eventually, Eduardo would agree to invest $15,000 in a com
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They did check. Trademarks only apply in the same field. This is not a company even remotely in the same field as Facebook or any of its derivatives. It's an art installation company.
Their claim is that facebook's actions are causing them reputational damage because of name association, not that there's a trademark violation.
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Meta.is makes VR and AR stuff. Facebook-now-meta makes VR and AR stuff.
This is more a digital services company than an art installation company.
Depending on how they were granted the Meta trademark, I think they may have a case.
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You may be right. I'd have to read the claims made by the plaintiff's lawyers to understand what they're arguing for, but I would imagine that's one of the angles they would go for.
I just don't think this is a winning argument.
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I think it's "billionaire stupid" that's going on. The billionaires think that because well, they're billionaires, they are successful and thus are smarter than everyone else because they have billions of dollars.
Thus, they get extremely cocky and think they can do no wrong - because only successful people have billions of dollars.
Law and such, they can't apply - because only they have billions of dollars.
You may be seeing I'm omitting the biggest reason for their success - the people that helped get them t
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Mostly concurrence, though I tend to word it in terms of lottery winners ignoring all the losers. I think that luck is always a major factor. For example, there were lots of other people competing in all of the cases you mentioned, but now we only talk about the one winner.
But the way entropy works, the total energy input was always larger than the actual work that got performed. There were lots of losers, and even if most of them only lost on a small scale, the total loss has to be bigger than the winner's
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Satanism is making him stupid.
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Facebook named itself with a word which sounds like the word "Dead" - in Hebrew.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]
Last I checked, Zuck was a Jew and presumably he should know enough Hebrew / people who knew Hebrew to know what it sounds like.
So I don't think they really did much in the way of checks before renaming themselves.
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Last I checked, Zuck was a Jew and presumably he should know enough Hebrew / people who knew Hebrew to know what it sounds like.
That's an awfully wild presumption. A large number of Jews, particularly in the United States, understand very little, if any, Hebrew.
I know some Hebrew, and I asked someone who's reasonably fluent, and neither of us would make that connection without someone explicitly pointing it out. People who's first language is Hebrew would probably think that way, since their default line of thought when seeing a new word is to find a matching Hebrew word.
It also may depend a lot on how it's spelled in Hebrew.
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That would be a pretty strange Transliteration.
As far as I know you can transliterate from english/german to Hebrew letter by letter - just skipping the vowels, obviously.
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That would be a pretty strange Transliteration.
Care to be more specific about what transliteration you're talking about and why it would be strange?
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It would be strange as:
M -> M
E -> nothing
T -> T
A > Aleph
so in both cases you end up with MT-Aleph.
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I asked someone that lives in Israel, and the actual transliteration is mem-tet-hay.
And thanks Slashdot for still not support
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Just an ACK on the interesting branch.
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Interesting :D
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It's not just that he may / may be hanging out with people who know Hebrew.
It's just that most big companies try to find names that are inoffensive / sounds stupid in another language.
For example :
https://www.namzya.com/blog/na... [namzya.com]
Even when I was involved in a small startup a few days was spent on making sure the name selected does not have any other negative meanings in other languages.Or was used before in a manner which can be considered negative (maybe a rock band which was singing alot of vulgur songs,
Re: Is success making Zuck stupid? (Score:2)
Similarly in Arabic the transliteration of Meta is 'mim ya ta alif' which is the same spelling as the accusative case of the adjective 'dead'. Pronunciation is different, though.
None of this Metas. (Score:4, Funny)
See what I did there? *nudge nudge* Oh come on, it made you groan, admit it.
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That's so meta...
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I mostly agree with you but the idea with trademarks is they are supposed to be limited to a specific vertical or field. Microsoft has Windows(tm) as it applies to operating systems but not as it applies to other fields. I could grow a new carrot and call it a Windows(tm) Carrot and Microsoft wouldn't have legal grounds to do anything about it. This is very well settled law, in part thanks to Microsoft themselves.
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Why should any company whatsoever be entitled to register a trademark on a generic word from the dictionary? The same goes for Apple, Windows and a whole lot of other stuff out there...
As long as the term is not a generic term that describe the product it seems reasonable. You can't trademark Apple if you sell apples, but since computers are generally not associated with apples it is not unreasonable.
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Apple is strictly speaking not in the "field of music".
Regarding music they are just resellers, and happily sell the music made/produced/published by Apple - the music company.
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Apple is strictly speaking not in the "field of music". Regarding music they are just resellers, and happily sell the music made/produced/published by Apple - the music company.
They aren't in the field of music, but literally have a product called Apple Music [apple.com]?
I'm going to make a product, and call it "Facebook Social Network", but it's not really a social network, it just helps people network in general, and sometimes that'd be on Facebook. I'm sure Meta would be perfectly fine with this product name.
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What has that to do with the topic?
I fail to get your point.
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Well, you are pretty out of the loop.
Apple Records tried to sue apple about iTunes. They either lost - or made an agreement - what exactly I forgot.
What your exact point about "Apple Music" versus "Apple Records" is, you failed to explain.
"Apple Records" has its trademark "Apple Records", Apple has its trademark "Apple" and "Apple Music" is just a damn App in an Appstore. What is wrong with that?
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Yeah you can call yourself Apple if you make computers, as long as you don't go into the field of music. Then when you do go into music, you're a giant corporation so the rules don't apply to you anyway.
Didn’t Apple Computer come to an agreement with Apple teh music publisher?
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Yeah the agreement was basically "OK you can use the world 'Apple' but stay out of music". Odd that things starting going in Apple Inc's favor once they were on their upwards swing and worth more money. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.
Yea, but Apple Corps didn't do to bad in the end, per Wikipedia:
As revealed on 5 February 2007, Apple Inc. and Apple Corps reached a settlement of their trademark dispute under which Apple Inc. will own all of the trademarks related to "Apple" and will license certain of those trademarks back to Apple Corps for their continued use. The settlement ends the ongoing trademark lawsuit between the companies, with each party bearing its own legal costs, and Apple Inc. will continue using its name and logos on iT
If META and Meta jump off a cliff... (Score:2)
Who ends up in a fiery mess at the bottom first?
Who gives a fuck, as long as both JUMP!
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Also, why do they both have to jump? One of them deserves to crash and burn a lot sooner for all the mental health costs they exacerbated in our societies and damage done to democracy while making billions in the process.
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You're overthinking this. I'm a man of simple tastes. Jump you fuckers [youtube.com].
That's so meta (Score:3)
that I can't even meta-comphrenend it.
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Go... meta? F... meta?
That's what happens when... (Score:3, Insightful)
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> And have expensive lawyers with the most ridiculous country laws in the planet.
They are not ridiculous, they are intentionally shaped to favor the rich and powerful. USA is largely a plutocracy.
Here in germany... (Score:2)
...or maybe even in all of europe, a trademark is only protected within the scope of the business.
I could have business named the "coca cola company", as long as I don't sell drinks.
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...or maybe even in all of europe, a trademark is only protected within the scope of the business.
I could have business named the "coca cola company", as long as I don't sell drinks.
German trademark law must be different, as you generally can't cause confusion with the there mark as well. Calling your business the coca cola company is likely to cause confusion with the real Coca Cola Company and be disallowed, at least in some countries. I would guess there may be cases where you could get away with it, but I suspect they are very few.
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Bad example, only because the word cola when you're a non-food company makes it obvious that you're trying to ride on their brand recognition.
A better example would be Apple Records and Apple Computer.
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Well, they do make a good point that Faecesbook being called Meta now makes the "Meta" name like a septic tank.
Here's what's gonna happen (Score:4, Informative)
The smaller Meta will lose its name. Exactly like these guys did [wikipedia.org].
All you need to steal someone's name is a lot of money and lawyers to throw it at, both of which Facebook has an infinite supply of.
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While that still sucks, it's different, in that the small company predates the Facebook rename by a decade, while the Olympics precede that business by a long time. Of course it's Oympia which isn't even Olympic and not even vaguely in the same field.
Of course I wouldn't be surprised if the same argument that fails for a little company "Our name isn't quite the same and we aren't in the same market" will suddenly work for Facebook-Meta.
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Of course it's Oympia which isn't even Olympic and not even vaguely in the same field.
Their original name was "Olympic Provisions" - they were forced to change it to "Olympia". Admittedly, on that Wikipedia page, that information is buried... way down in the first sentence. :-D
Less snarkily, while they were founded in 2009 they took their original name from the building they were in - the Olympic Cereal Mill, built in 1904.
Since it is extremely unlikely anyone would confuse this meat company with that particular sporting (?) organization, in my mind this was a dick move (one out of many, ove
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The smaller Meta will lose its name. Exactly like these guys did [wikipedia.org].
All you need to steal someone's name is a lot of money and lawyers to throw it at, both of which Facebook has an infinite supply of.
I think that a better comparison may be Nissan Motors v. Nissan Computer [wikipedia.org]
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Best case scenario, "meta" is considered too generic to trademark.
Yes, sadly both can't lose (Score:1)
The smaller Meta will lose its name.
I totally agree with you, should have spent 12 years working on a more unique name!
However what I wish would happen, is that NEITHER company gets to own Meta, it's a really common term and has been for even longer than 12 years. I think something too generic should not be able to be trademarked or otherwise reserved.
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what I wish would happen, is that NEITHER company gets to own Meta
Oh yeah, because Apple or Windows are so unique in comparison...
I don't care what Facebook wants to calls itself: whatever the name, they're trying to disguise the fact that it's really just awful toxic Facebook behind it. I wish the media and people quit playing along and made a deliberate effort to shun their fake name and call them what they really are: FACE-fucking-BOOK.
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Oh yeah, because Apple or Windows are so unique in comparison...
Why do you think the same argument does not apply?
Facebook at least is not a common term for anything.
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Thus begat a long line of lawsuits ... (Score:2)
I felt sorry for Meta.IS for a moment.. but.. (Score:1)
This is not unreasonable. (Score:3)
According to their site:
"We have produced acclaimed campaigns with extraordinary creators, producers, and technologists across every Reality possible, including social VR, AR, XR, immersive music experiences, and IRL."
They have a case, especially since they claim to have been negotiating with the aggressor for eight months. And ESPECIALLY since their trademarks are (by their claim) federally registered.
Re: This is not unreasonable. (Score:2)
I'm not sure they do. I looked at their website, which was pretty difficult to find, and it's not particularly clear what they actually do. As best as I can make out, it's some kind of design company. That they use VR as a medium, among many others, won't give them a win any more than Oracle could assert a claim over Warner Brothers by arguing they have a black female employee who gives advice to customers.
Google should sue Meta (Score:2)
I'm waiting for Google to sue meta for their use of the Googol symbol.
Dumb name choice (Score:2)
Don't choose a single dictionary word as a company name, unless you plan on rent seeking. Chances are somebody will use that sane word, perfectly legally so long as their business can't be confused with yours.
He punched a fan, better listen (Score:2)
Is Metta Artest going to join the suit? [wikipedia.org] (Formerly Metta World Peace, formally Ron Artest.)
They should do a John Mcafee on the Meta name (Score:3)
No way (Score:2)
I hate fb as much as the next person, but there is simply no way they will change the meta name. That ship sailed the moment fb announced the name. If they were to lose the lawsuit they'd be better off outright buying META.is and gutting it rather than changing names.
That said, the small company should have to show that they are legitimately and negatively impacted by the fb rename. Are real potential customers actually going to say, "I need a company to support my art installation, but this META.is company
Don't name stories like this (Score:2)
Would be nice if the people accepting articles on Slashdot were to stop letting cutseyness outweigh "this is a good title" considerations for articles.
Stupid name (Score:2)
Metastabook simply should not have done this.