14 DAY TRIAL // Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, is being dragged to court for a reason that isn’t necessarily surprising.
META, a company that was founded no less than 12 years ago to offer augmented reality experiences to customers, claims Facebook’s parent company has caused particular problems for its business, especially given its investments in the metaverse.
Speaking to CNBC, META’s lawyers claims the brand name is making it hard for customers to buy the company’s services given most believe they are provided by Meta.
Owner Justin Bolognino told the cited source that its business has been decimated by the creation of a company called Meta and having so much exposure given it is the owner of social network Facebook.
“It was surreal. It was like watching a movie,” he said. “This is not a scenario I ever wanted to have. This is not a scenario I would wish on my worst enemy. When Facebook stole the Meta brand from us, it just completely decimated our business. [The services we offer] are drastically identical… we have the same goal which is social immersion in virtual spaces.”
Negotiations underway
Oddly enough, lawyer Dyan Finguerra-DuCharme says they already reached out to Meta to discuss the brand confusion but so far, the two sides have failed to reach an agreement. The negotiations have been underway for some eight months already.
“This issue of what’s called reverse confusion, when you’ve got a small player who’s been doing their business for a period of time, and then you get a giant corporate behemoth with sheer arrogance says ‘I’m going to own this mark now and I’m going to do business with this regardless of the fact that you were here before me,’” the lawyer said.
Suing was pretty much the last option.
“We would like to be compensated for our 12 years worth of building a brand so cool and so valuable that one of the biggest companies on Earth and Facebook wanted to steal it from us,” META’s owner said.