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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."
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.
Bunn (maker of most of the commercial coffee brewing machines in the U.S.) recommends the coffee be held at 175-185F. This is the temperature when it comes out of the serving machine (it is held in the serving machine prior), and the temperature setting which was at issue in the lawsuit. It is the same temperature used by restaurants nationwide, including Starbucks.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit surveyed coffee temperatures at other restaurants nearby, and stated "Other establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures." Note the wording. They didn't give the average temp, nor a range of temps. They simply stated that some restaurants sold their coffee at a much lower temperature. If they had found that McDonalds coffee was unusually hot, they would have stated something more like "most establishments sell coffee at substantially lower temperatures." That they didn't indicates it's just deceptive wording used to take a survey which didn't support their case, and made it appear as if it did.
McDonalds set the temperature that high because people complained about it getting too cold by the time they got home or to work. After the lawsuit they tried lowering the temperature, but too many people complained and they raised it again. Today, McDonalds follows Bunn's 175-185 F recommendation. The lawsuit changed nothing about how coffee is served.
And how do you figure hotter coffee leads to brewing fewer pots each day? These machines are temperature regulated. If you set it at 185F, it will keep the coffee at 185F all day. If you set it at 165F, it'll keep the coffee at 165F all day. You don't brew it, use it until it cools, then throw the rest out once it gets too cool. If anything, hotter coffee would lead to brewing more coffee, as the water and aromatics will evaporate more quickly at higher temperature.
If you take the number of burns reported from spilled McDonalds coffee, and divide it by the number of cups of coffee McDonalds sold in the same time period of those spills, you'll arrive at an accident rate for McDonalds coffee. If you then compare that accident rate to other accident rates, you discover a funny thing. If you drive 5 miles round trip to buy your McDonalds coffee, you are actually more likely to die in an auto accident buying your cup of coffee, than you are to be burned from spilling it on yourself.