Facebook accused of stealing name, this company filed suit.
Social media giant Facebook has been accused of stealing its name. A VR company named Meta has accused Facebook of name theft and Meta has filed a lawsuit against tech giant Facebook in this case.
The Meta company — which is registered as MetaX LLC but goes by the name “Meta” in its branding — filed the lawsuit Tuesday in Manhattan court. According to the lawsuit, the company was founded in 2010, applied for its trademark in 2016 and was successfully registered in 2020.
Notably, Facebook rebranded itself as Meta in October last year, and announced that it would focus on so-called “metaverse” technologies. So far this includes VR and AR technologies.
According to a Business Insider report, the lawsuit argues that MetaX’s rebrand, in conjunction with its Metaverse mission, harmed MetaX’s business. The company said in its lawsuit that, “Meta has been crushed by Facebook’s illegal conduct.” MetaX founder Justin “JB” Bolognino said in a statement on Twitter that the company put “blood, sweat and tears” into building its brand, which MetaX “seized”.
MetaX said the rebrand had already caused confusion with consumers, and people began to ask, whether their product was “related to Facebook”. The lawsuit also states that the logos of the two companies are “conceptually similar” because they both use shapes that look similar to the letter “M”. MetaX claims Facebook knew of their existence before rebranding Meta, after Bolognino in 2017 exchanged emails with senior Facebook employees who hosted the experience at an event.
“Facebook and Bolognino further discussed Meta’s products and services, prompting Facebook to solicit Meta to collaborate with Facebook on future work,” the lawsuit states. According to the lawsuit, Bolognino wrote to Meta in December 2021 expressing concerns that the rebrand could harm his business. In a letter attached to the lawsuit as evidence, a Meta employee responded to Bolognino, saying that the two companies offer “quite different goods and services.”
