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Merck Threatens Merck With Legal Action Over Facebook URL
angry tapir writes with an excerpt from a Techworld article: "Germany's Merck KGaA has threatened legal action after it said it lost its Facebook page apparently to rival Merck & Co. in the U.S., though it has yet to identify defendants in the case. In a filing before the Supreme Court of the State of New York, Merck said it intends to initiate an action based on the apparent takeover of its Facebook page at www.facebook.com/merck by its similarly-named but unrelated competitor, Merck & Co."
Merck was a single German company prior to WWI, their North American assets were seized by the US government in 1917 and is now Merck & Co. What remained in Germany is now Merck KGaA.
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Merck Germany says it had "an agreement" with Facebook for the name. Later Merck America was running the page. No where in TFA does it says Merck G is suing Merck A, only Facebook. Once again TFS screws up the headline on TFA.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I hope they take Merck to the cleaners while defending their IP.
I thought all lawsuits in this litigious society of ours was due to little old ladies spilling coffee on themselves at McDonalds? Dear God say it isn't so!
KGaA is German for a specific kind of "limited partnership". It'd be like saying a limited liability company can use "LLC" as its name.
So Trademark law isn't designed to take World War I into account? Ya know, it was kind of a big deal.
Neither is patent law. Bayer lost aspirin. The US Army stopped paying royalties to Mauser over the "infringing" M1903 Springfield rifle.
"Facebook Inc said on Monday that it made a mistake in letting Merck & Co take over a page on the social networking website from its German rival Merck KGaA." - IBTimes
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
While it is clearly not a FQDN, does an address in someone else's domain count as an URL? It's not like they really own it...
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Why is a warning necessary? Is it not common knowledge that coffee is hot?
This is the kind of thinking that leads to warning labels like "do not set ladder in mud", "do not use hairdryer while bathing" and similar nonsense. There should be a standard of reasonableness - this has gone lost. Now we have this wonderful feedback cycle going: The courts allow frankly frivolous lawsuits to proceed, people play courts like a lottery, so whenever something bad happens people look around for deep pockets to sue, lawyers find this a great way to make money, later become judges, and allow more frivolous lawsuits through the system...
Perhaps the McDonald's coffee case was justified - there has been so much hype that it's hard to tell. However, the presence of (unnecessary) warning labels would almost certainly not have helped them.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
As I know most here are hoping Merck wins this case.
I,however, hope Merck wins this case.
To reiterate one of my questions : it is possible for this to be either a genuine misunderstanding, or a mis-applied policy, or an unintended consequence of a seemingly reasonable policy. However, after an initial period of "WTF has happened?", silence is not an appropriate response from FB.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"