Company named MetaX sues Facebook’s parent company for name theft – IT Pro – News

A company bearing the brand name MetaX is suing the parent company of Facebook of the same name for stealing the name of the company in question. According to the prosecutor, the company is disenfranchised due to a possible confusion of identity.

The plaintiff, MetaX LLC, was Court documents It was founded in 2010 and has been using the Meta brand name ever since. When Facebook in October 2021 Renamed to Metathe parent company of Facebook allegedly infringed “the intellectual property of MetaX and its federally registered trademarks and trademark rights.”

In its own words, running MetaX tech installation has become impossible since Facebook implemented the name change. “Consumers may mistakenly believe that our goods and services are made by Facebook, which is why we are associated with Facebook’s inherent toxicity.” In the lawsuit, MetaX is asking Facebook’s parent company to stop using the Meta brand name for products and services that interfere with MetaX’s business. The company also wants compensation. The amount is unknown.

In a blog post on the MetaX website, the company said it has been trying to negotiate with Facebook’s parent company for the past eight months. This would not have come to anything, which is what motivates the lawsuit in question. Court documents show that the correspondence between the tech giant and the art company did indeed take place. The two sides are said to have crossed in 2017, long before Facebook’s name change. So the tech giant should be aware of the existence of MetaX. Later, a Facebook employee claimed that the two companies offer “completely different goods and services.”

The relatively small MetaX appears to own the right to the trade name, but lawsuits in this category are usually complex. When two companies actually serve completely different markets, the same name can be used. MetaX states that its work overlaps with that of its parent company, Facebook, due to its focus on VR, AR, and the metaverse. Facebook has yet to respond to the lawsuit.

Update time 20:00: The original message contained a link to the MetaX website with the phrase “blog post on the site”. As some Tweakers have noted, the website appears to present a strange message about the browser version being used, after which in some cases a seemingly fraudulent file is downloaded automatically. The link has been removed from the post. thanks for the Iserstein.