META: the new name of Facebook is already a registered trademark by a PC manufacturer, blunder! – GAMERGEN.COM

You probably know it, the parent company of Facebook has changed its name so that it is no longer associated with the social network and not with all the activities of the company (Instagram, WhatsApp…), including the famous metaverse. If you ever missed this whole story, we’ve made it a full recap. here. This kind of thing not being prepared between two coffees in front of the machine, it is difficult to imagine that the American giant finds itself in such a situation, that is to say of having chosen a brand name already registered in the United States.

Indeed, Joe Darger and Zack Shutt set up, in November 2020, a PC manufacturing company for gamers, Meta PCs. The site TMZ posted a document online showing that it was last August that they filed a trademark application in the United States for the word Meta in the fields of computers, laptops, tablets, software and other high-tech products, is right in the field of Facebook. This having been validated, they are therefore currently the owners of the brand. The two founders, who explain that they were not aware of the project to change the name of Facebook until its announcement on October 28, set the sale price of their brand at $ 20 million. Mockers, they created a visual showing Mark Zuckerberg holding one of their PC and turned a little video where Zack Shutt parodies him explaining that their company name will change to become Facebook.

At this hour, Facebook has yet to comment on this blunder, but someone close to the company reportedly told TMZ that the American giant was not worried and had all the rights required to obtain the name. The showdown between David and Goliath begins and will not necessarily be won by those who already have the mark. Indeed, The Guardian asked the opinion of Mark P. McKenna, professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and he explained that there are loopholes in order to recover the ownership of a mark. The most common is to file an application in another country, a small one without a preference search system, and use that supposedly earlier application date to file it in the United States. This practice, often used by large groups, is misleading, but seems to work well.

META, the small company with its 25 employees, will it succeed in keeping its name or reselling it to Facebook ? The story is only just beginning and, while in normal times the odds would have been rather slim, it may be that the bad buzz that this scam would generate to get the mark is not what Marc Zuckerberg needs at the moment. As a reminder, he is already heckled following an investigation by Wall Street Journal where a former employee, who became a whistleblower, revealed evidence in support of the not-so-pretty practices on the part of the company. To be continued !