‘Decimated Our Business:’ Company Named META Sues Facebook for Trademark Infringement

A company named META is suing Facebook for trademark infringement and unfair competition after the social media giant’s recent rebranding as Meta.

CNBC reports that Justin Bolognino, the owner of a small business named META — full name METAx LLC, is suing Facebook, which rebranded as Meta Platforms,  for trademark infringement and unfair competition.

Bolognino commented: “This is not a scenario I ever wanted to have. This is not a scenario I would wish on my worst enemy. When Facebook stole the Meta brand from us, it just completely decimated our business.”

Bolognino said that he started his business 12 years ago to create multi-sensory live experiences using virtual and augmented reality for events such as Coachella. But after Facebook announced its rebrand, his business came to a halt. ″[The services we offer] are drastically identical… we have the same goal which is social immersion in virtual spaces,” he said.

Dyan Finguerra-DuCharme, Bolognino’s attorney and a partner at Pryor Cashman LLP, stated that she reached out to Meta Platforms to tell the company of its infringement on her client’s intellectual property rights.

“This issue of what’s called reverse confusion, when you’ve got a small player who’s been doing their business for a period of time, and then you get a giant corporate behemoth with sheer arrogance says ‘I’m going to own this mark now and I’m going to do business with this regardless of the fact that you were here before me,’” she told CNBC.

Finguerra-DuCharme said that the two companies engaged in eight months of negotiations but despite providing thousands of pages of information, Meta refused to come to the table. “Now my client goes out to try to market and promote its services, consumers now falsely and mistakenly believe that its services are coming from Facebook,” she said.

Bolognino stated: “We would like to be compensated for our 12 years’ worth of building a brand so cool and so valuable that one of the biggest companies on Earth and Facebook wanted to steal it from us.”

Read more at CNBC here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan