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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.
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.
But didn't you know corporations are people too.
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
For the record, the "McDonalds hot coffee" thing was NOT an example of lawsuit abuse, even though it's commonly trotted out as an example of it.
It's more an example of "McDonalds screwed up, then refused to do anything to make it right, then was sued and lost".
More on it can be found here and if you think she wasn't that badly hurt, check out the picture of the burns here (warning: not safe for lunch).
Coffee is often made with boiling water, so 185F coffee isn't unreasonable or something which should be unexpected. McDonald's shouldn't have to warn people of that, nor should they be held responsible if people spill it on themselves.
Your link, to a self-serving article by the "Consumer Attorneys of California," does nothing to support your claim that this was anything other than an unreasonable abuse of the legal process.
"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.
> Coffee is often made with boiling water
Coffee should *never" be made with boiling water as that scalds the beans.
French fries are made with boiling oil, but I would expect the final product to be served at a temperature that's safe to eat.
Much like I'd expect coffee to be served at a temperature that's safe to drink.
185F is reasonable for the temperature the coffee is prepared at, not the temperature at which it is served. It should be served closer to 160F. McDonald's was overheating it so that it would stay hot longer (allowing them to serve it for a longer period, and thus make fewer pots over the day).
Furthermore, the woman only asked for $20k, barely enough to cover her medical expenses and lost work hours. She wasn't being greedy at all. It was McDonald's choice to risk a jury trial, and they paid for it. Losing a jury trial should be more expensive than settling, otherwise corporations have no incentive to ever settle with us comparatively short-lived humans.
Nonetheless, it often is. The same article goes on to say "About 200 degrees Fahrenheit is the optimal temperature to make coffee," and the National Coffee Association agrees, and goes on to say that "If it will be a few minutes before it will be served, the temperature should be maintained at 180 - 185 degrees Fahrenheit."
So the point stands - 185 degrees shouldn't be an unexpected serving temperature.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Yeah. She shoulda gotten a Darwin award.
I don't mean to dis her injury - bad burns do a lot more than just hurt like a sumbitch.
McDs in a neighborly fashion should've paid her bills, and the judge should've dismissed the case.
Instead, McDucks rolled over, the sueage floodgates opened, lawyers got an even worse rep, and judges and juries appeared even more clueless than usual.
You left out crooked companies got a very nice PR story in the public conciousness for passing tort reform.
Cries for tort reform happen everyday using that little old lady as an example. and everyday someone has to post the pics and insert the words THIRD FUCKING DEGREE BURNS.
Believe me, even if mc D's has to put a label on a coffee cup and pay some little old lady and her lawyer, the meme of "frivilous lawsuits" in the public mind which is used to take away every american's right to sue for damages is worth a thousand of these lawsuits.
Coffee is supposed to be served at a temperature that will cause only minor burns if spilled. McDonalds deliberately put theirs customers at risk of serious burns to save money.
You know, people often complain around here that "if corporations are people, why aren't they subject to criminal law". Well, that's what "gross negligence" is. Had McD's served their coffe at the more reasonable temp that most everyone else does, this would maybe have been ordinary negligence, and the lady would likely have gotten the $20k she sued for (because juries love to award money to little old adies). But instead they knowingly endangered their customers to make a buck, and this (unnecessarily serious injury) was the statistically predictable result.
Really high awards for gross negligence take the place of criminal law for corporations. When a corporation deliberately puts customers at risk because it seems cheaper, it's appropriate to respond with an award so high that it scares other corporations away from that way of thinking.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Well the judge and jury disagree with you, but what do they know hearing all of the evidence.
what's it like being a retard?
The hottest coffee I've ever been served was from a Starbucks (primarily the reason they no longer get my business).
Donald Trump is that you???
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
an unreasonable abuse of the legal process.
The temperature of the coffee is what I would call a red herring. It matters not what temperature the coffee was served at... what matters is where the victim was injured. If she tripped on her own shoelaces in the restaurant, and was injured in a fall, McDonald's is culpable. If the temp of the coffee was only 108F, and she incurred her injury on the premises (which she did), McDonald's is culpable for damages. The facts of the actual case are clear that she sustained a rather bad injury on McDonald's premises. It matters not whether McDonald's was negligent afa coffee temperature. What matters is that she was severly injured on McDonald's property with McDonald's product, irregardless of what that product was. Imagine a kid in Toy r Us... Mom buys him a toy which he promptly chokes to death on in Toys r us. Toys R Us is absolutely culpable and any case brought against them is most certainly valid and necessarily non-frivolous. Same is true of the McDonald's coffee case.
The Admin and the Engineer
I take a hammer and accidentally hit my thumb and break it. Does Craftsman owe me the money for the medical expense since their hammer was used?
Absolutely, YES: if and only if you incurred the injury on Craftsman's property.
The Admin and the Engineer
Sorry, but that simply isn't the state of the law -- certainly not in America, at least. The general theory for slip-and-fall cases is one of negligence: did the defendant fail to meet the standard of behavior that a reasonable person in similar circumstances would take, and if so, did that conduct cause the plaintiff's injury. If not, no liability.
The Hot Coffee case operated on a more plaintiff-friendly theory: in product-liability cases, liability is "strict." That is, courts will not ask whether the standard of care was negligent, only whether the product was defective, and did that defect cause the injury. The plaintiff there argued that coffee served at 185F was per se "defective," thus it didn't matter whether McDonald's was otherwise negligent. This is arguably the most questionable part about that lawsuit, since many people (including other courts) disagree with that premise, and instead argue that coffee *should* be served that hot. See McMahon v. Bunn-O-Matic Corp., 150 F.3d 651 (7th Cir. 1997):
"The smell (and therefore the taste) of coffee depends heavily on the oils containing aromatic compounds that are dissolved out of the beans during the brewing process. Brewing temperature should be close to 200 F [93 C] to dissolve them effectively, but without causing the premature breakdown of these delicate molecules. Coffee smells and tastes best when these aromatic compounds evaporate from the surface of the coffee as it is being drunk. Compounds vital to flavor have boiling points in the range of 150–160 F [66–71 C], and the beverage therefore tastes best when it is this hot and the aromatics vaporize as it is being drunk. For coffee to be 150 F when imbibed, it must be hotter in the pot. Pouring a liquid increases its surface area and cools it; more heat is lost by contact with the cooler container; if the consumer adds cream and sugar (plus a metal spoon to stir them) the liquid's temperature falls again. If the consumer carries the container out for later consumption, the beverage cools still further."
But one way or the other, causation is absolutely required. If you slip on your own shoelaces at McDonalds, and there is no link whatsoever to McDonald's conduct, you're necessarily out of luck.
No reasonable person would expect coffee sold at a drive-through to be hot enough to cause serious burns, and no sensible person would knowingly buy such coffee. Liquids in cars are liable to spill now and then, no matter how much care you take.
By way of analogy, if you paved a footpath with broken glass, and someone fell down and seriously injured themselves, would it be their own fault for falling down or yours for using broken glass? After all, everybody knows that care must be taken to avoid falling down. (What they don't expect is for the consequences to be disproportionate.)
If you're looking for negligence, it is readily apparent in that case. McDonald's was negligent in not warning the customer that the coffee was dangerously hot. Also, McDonald's was negligent in failing to provide a container that was void of defect... (if you remember the old coffee cups at McDonald's, a mild squeeze, just ever so slightly more pressure than is need to lift it, and the top would pop off, and the coffee would spill all over your hand, burning you). Again, the TEMPERATURE OF THE COFFEE DOESN'T MATTER, it is a red herring. Had the coffee been AS HOT AS THE SUN, as long as they had properly notified customers that it was hot with posted warnings, and provided a defect-free container, then McDonald's MIGHT have had a chance. Unfortunately for McDonald's, they DID NOT have any warnings, and their coffee cups were notoriously defective. The case was valid, and justice was served.
The Admin and the Engineer
FTFY. Of course, this being McDonald's, that's sort of a moot point...
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Your link, to a self-serving article by the "Consumer Attorneys of California," does nothing to support your claim that this was anything other than an unreasonable abuse of the legal process.
I could link to the Hot Coffee Documentary, but of course since the incident is a large part of the documentary, I guess that's "self-serving" too and therefore is also to be dismissed out of hand. Unfortunately, being a video, it's a bit hard to cite as people can't quickly read it like they can an article.
Or the Wikipedia page, though anybody can edit wikipedia, so it should be dismissed too, right? (To be fair, the wikipedia page doesn't really say that the lawsuit was or wasn't valid -- but it does give a good explanation of what lead up to it and why it turned out the way it did.)
Ultimately, most everything has bias. If you ignore things that are likely to have bias -- you'll be ignoring everything. The smart person can read things, even biased things, and still learn something.
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.
Oh, that must be why they want to have a presence on facebook, a social networking site.. Gee, can't wait to friend such a corporation, do you think it will come to my birthday party?
And thanks to this logic, consumers all over the world are now regarded as little children. Warnings are placed everywhere. You are not allowed any initiative anymore, all in fear of a lawsuit. So much money going to waste. And all that because some prick wanted to extort McDonalds.
You must be a happy camper now that all coffee mugs have "Warning hot!" written on them. I cannot believe mankind survived so long without these warnings, they are essential to our existance.
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.
Yes, if Craftsman has already settled ~700 claims for damage and knows all about this situation.
Actually, the 700 claims prior to this one indicate that McDonalds knew about and should have dealt with it.
Well, I read over the articel you have linked and stumbel over this:
This is utter nonsense. Coffee with 140 degrees (Fahrenheit) is considered cold coffee in most of the world.
Even after feeling symphatic with the poor Lady who burned herself I can not help me. That McDonalds case is completely retarded. And only shows how retarded the US legal system is. Find a jury you can convince that X is bad. And you have your established case law.
WTF: she put the coffee cup between her knees to remove the lid. If a child tries to do that you slap it on the fingers.
None of the arguments in that case makes any sense from a european point of view.
Behaviour of the lady: their own fault.
Coffee: correct temperature
Burnings: likely due to inproper closing, or the coffee was very huge. When I spill a cup of hot coffee over my jeans the coffee is cold before it seriously can burn me. Yes, the skin will be red. But tomorrow you wont see it any more.
Sorry, that picture you link there must be fake or the reasons for the wounds are something different (in addition to a slight burn). Perhaps it is photo shopped. You need litters of boiling water/coffee to cause such a wound.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
You are perfectly right and the moron who modded you flaimbait should be stopped from further modding.
180F is below breing temperature! It is a very reasonable temperature for coffee. If you carefully sip, with drawig in some air, you even can start drinking at this temperature. (This is 82.22C, coffee is usually brewed at 85C - 90C)
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Warning: Coffee is hot.
Warning: Ice cream is cold.
Warning: Water is wet. (Oops, EU says you can't say that.)
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
As I know most here are hoping Merck wins this case.
I,however, hope Merck wins this case.
Well I hope they only let companies join which are at least 14 years old.
The same article goes on to say "About 200 degrees Fahrenheit is the optimal temperature to make coffee," and the National Coffee Association agrees
Ah, its talking about the american version, not a real espresso made by forcing boiling water through the grounds. It means ideal if you want to avoid the real coffee favour.
The old lady asking for $20,000 to cover the medical bills for her nasty burns was extorting?
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Just curious, where did you get your medical degree? Because clearly your internet opinion is better than those of the emergency room doctors that saw her just after she burned herself with the coffee.
Also, where did you get your statistics degree? I'm curious since your analysis of coffee serving temperature isn't backed up with a reference to a study, so I assume you completed the study yourself.
Oh, and where did you get your law degree? Since you don't think any of the arguments make sense, I assume you've read the reports that McDonald's had received 700 previous complaints about the coffee being too hot, making the claim that "He admitted that he had not evaluated the safety ramifications at this temperature" seem less like an accident and more like negligence.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I wrote from my european stand of view.
I don't need a statistics or a degree to assert you that coffee here is served hotter than 80 Degrees Celsius (That was the 140 Fahrenheit IIRC).
After all coffee is usually made fresh per cup and if it is "filter coffee" which is prepared ahead it is also far above the temperature mentioend in this articles.
The typical brewing temperature is around 90 Degrees Celsius. You know, that you can read on wikipedia ... its the reccomended temperature to get the best "solution" from your coffee grains.
Regading law degree, wtf why I should I need a law degree? We all know that law in the USA works different than in the EU.
Thats why so many people joke about this case. Regarding my medical degree: sorry, did you look at the photo that guy has linked I answered to?
The wound there does simply not come from a 140 Fahrenheit water burn. The women on that photo has no skin but raw flesh in an huge area. The edges of the wound is strange coloured.
Do you really think I never in my life accidently poured some coffy over my hand? And? Did the skin make bubbles? Certainly not. So either that coffee was still nearly boiling then there would be a case perhaps or the coffee was just normal tempered and the lady was just stupid. Regardless how hot the coffee was, they way she treeted it is stupid. In Europe you had really trouble to make a case on this.
This: 'I assume you've read the reports that McDonald's had received 700 previous complaints about the coffee being too hot, making the claim that "He admitted that he had not evaluated the safety ramifications at this temperature" seem less like an accident and more like negligence.' is for an ordinary case, at least in germany and I would guess for the rest of EU, completely meaningless.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
(Oops, EU says you can't say that.)
No, as I understand it, you can't claim that water can prevent dehydration. I don't think they stop you from saying that it's wet. (yet?)
Warning: Water is wet. (Oops, EU says you can't say that.)
you might want to research that story a bit further than just the initial headline. It turned out the claim was that bottled water is a medicine against dehydration (a medical condition). Not all forms of dehydration are cured by drinking water, and in some situations it is even harmful to the patient. So common sense prevailed and the claim was struck down.
Now if you want to have an argument about the quality of British press (who first ran the story), that's an entirely different topic.
A more apt analogy would be a beach.
If I opened a beach, and someone cut their foot on a seashell because they were running barefoot, there's no way I should be held liable. Seashells are known by all reasonable people to exist on beaches, and precautions should be taken to not cut your feet on them. If a person fails to take reasonable responsibility for their own safety, others should not be responsible to take up the slack.
It's not like the coffee was hot and other coffee is not hot. All coffee is hot. That's one of the defining features of coffee. The coffee served by McDonald's was high, but only marginally higher than that you'll find being served ANYWHERE ELSE -- the hold temperature for coffee is typically 170 or 175 F (and would likely be 180 were this case to never have happened..)
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
If all coffee is hot enough to cause third degree burns (I'm not sure I believe this) then it should not be sold to people in cars. (It probably shouldn't be sold in styrofoam cups, either, even in-shop.) Don't you guys have any sort of OSH legislation?
Assuming for the sake of argument that this *is* true, people wouldn't buy coffee from the drive-through if they knew about it; they do, so they don't. So in the beach analogy it would be as if (almost) nobody had ever heard of seashells, and didn't know that they shouldn't run barefoot. (Still not a great analogy, because if you're on a beach you can wear shoes or walk carefully to eliminate the risk posed by seashells, whereas there's nothing you can do to make a cup of coffee adequately secure when in a car.)
However, I have been told that the McD coffee was (at the time) made deliberately hotter than coffee is normally served at, in order to cater to customers who picked it up at the drive-through but didn't drink it until they reached work. I don't know if this is true.
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"
This is the first I've ever heard of people drinking coffee for the flavor. And here all this time I thought is was some bitter near poisonous motor oil looking substance that I used because it isn't legal to snort coke first thing in the morning.
Water over 150 F will cause third degree burns. Most coffee is served ~160-165 F. Most coffee is held at ~170-175 F.
The McDonald's coffee in this case was held at 180-185 F.
The lady got burnt worse, and faster, than she would have today had she ordered from a Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts -- but she still would have gotten badly burnt if she tried to pull that stunt.
People DO know coffee is that hot, and DO buy coffee through drive-through windows. Every day! If they DIDN'T know about it, they would be in trouble, but they DO, so they simply take the simple precaution of *not spilling it on their fucking lap*!
The beach analogy works -- if you want to secure a cup of coffee in a car, even if it's in an oldschool soft styrofoam cup (which you may have never seen before -- modern styrofoam cups are much more rigid)? All you need to do is hold it *in your hand*. Not between your knees -- and certainly not between SWEATPANTS-CLAD knees. You know, sweatpants. Those things that provide *no traction at all on styrofoam*. That necessitates a great deal of pressure from the old coot's knees to keep the cup in place, which crushes the soft styrofoam cup as soon as she removes the lid -- and that's why she spilled on herself, and that's why she got burnt. Because she did a number of very stupid, very foolish things that *no sensible person ever would do*.
... still waiting for this free-as-in-beer free beer I keep hearing about.
You hold it in your hand, right, that will work. Because cars never have to brake suddenly or get run into from behind.
Wrap your hand in skin-tight clothing, then pour some more coffee on your hand. Make sure you're strapped in so that you can't take the cloth off for 30 seconds. Also, don't use your hand - the skin there is tougher. Use your genitals. Then compare photos.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Already diod that on my legs. As I said: either the coffee was much hotter than claimed in the article, or it was much to cold to cause such burns. I would assume the burns are not burns but the result of mistreatment.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.