Mark Zuckerberg may have to buy the trademark for Meta for $20 million after computer retailers claim they beat the Facebook founder ...
Mark Zuckerberg may have to buy the trademark for Meta for $20 million after computer retailers claim they beat the Facebook founder to the punch on the trademark.
Arizona-based Meta PC filed on August 23 to trademark 'Meta' for computers, laptops, tablets, software and more items relating to tech - not far off the Silicon Valley giant's market sphere.
The founders, Joe Darger and Zack Shutt, told TMZ that they are willing to back down on the brand name if Zuckerberg agrees to shell out $20 million.
The techies have been running the company for just over a year and say they have invested 'considerable personal funds' in marketing and branding for Meta.
The founders, Zack Shutt (left) and Joe Darger (right), say they are willing to back down on the brand name if Zuckerberg agrees to shell out $20 million.
While their trademark has not yet been granted they believe they have a head start on Zuckerberg who announced the rebranding of Facebook to Meta last week.
The computer retailers say that giving up their name will require an expensive marketing drive to rebrand their company.
'We've bootstrapped this company with our own personal funds. When we learned Facebook chose the same name, it was obviously a concern that we would lose whatever organic reach we had worked hard to build,' Shutt told The Guardian, adding that they have 'sizable investments' in marketing.
But the shared name might not necessarily be all bad as Shutt and Darger revealed that they have already seen a 5,000 percent boost on their social media pages since the Zuckerberg announcement.
A Meta (Facebook) source told TMZ that the firm believes it has the rights to adopt the trademark.
And Mark P McKenna, a law professor at the University of California, said there are loopholes that may allow Facebook to acquire the name.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks during a live-streamed virtual and augmented reality conference to announce the rebrand of Facebook as Meta last week
One legal weapon is to file an application in another country and use that application date to file in the US.
'They look for a little country without a searchable system and then file there,' he told the Guardian. 'That would be a way for them to have an earlier date.'
He added that trademark registration did not define the rights of a company in the US.
'In the US, rights aren't created by trademark registration – the rights arise out of use,' he said.
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