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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
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
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.)
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.
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.
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.
Actually, the 700 claims prior to this one indicate that McDonalds knew about and should have dealt with it.
(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?)