Facebook Rebrand Faces A Problem: There’s Already A Company Called Meta
Facebook has a problem, another company already has the name Meta.
This article is more than 2 years old
In the latter half of October Facebook announced that it was changing its name to Meta in order to best reflect the company’s future goals as well as to restructure its existing brands to more clearly outline different areas of the company, namely to separate their social media entities from their plans to build a metaverse. However, Facebook may have run into a roadblock. As it turns out, according to IGN, there is already a company operating under the name Meta.
The company that already held the name that Facebook is attempting to usurp from them is Meta PC. They are an electronics retailer based in Phoenix, Arizona which sells computers, tablets, and the like. IGN detailed that Meta PC had filed the initial trademark to patent the name back in August (well before there were even whispers of Facebook’s potential rebrand), but that they had actually been in business for over a year.
Meta PC is seemingly taking the whole situation in stride. They posted two very comical tweets to their Twitter. One featuring a photoshopped picture of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg holding one of their products and the other a satirical video of Meta PC announcing that they intend to change their name to Facebook. Take a look below to have a good laugh.
In all seriousness though, Meta PC did express that if Mark Zuckerberg pays out $20 million to their company that they would dissolve their patent filing and let Facebook have the name. That might seem like a steep price to pay in order to back away from their trademark filing, however, considering that the company would have to do a complete rebrand of their own as a result it is understandable why they would ask for the payout.
Additionally, $20 million for Facebook is barely even a drop in the bucket, given that as of November 1, 2021, the company was valued at over $930 billion. Not only is the $20 million pocket change for the social media giant, but it might be well worth it for them to “donate” the $20 million to Meta PC so that they can keep the IP because it could serve their own best interests. Zuckerberg has publicly stated that they wanted to change Facebook’s name to Meta to echo what the company’s future aspirations are. However, many have speculated that the underlying intention was to divert attention away from Facebook’s ongoing legal troubles. Thus, it could be better for them to pay Meta PC what they are asking for, or at least attempt to negotiate what they think is a fair price.
Giving $20 million to Meta PC will also potentially save Facebook the trouble of either having to come up with a new company name or a new name for their biggest project, the metaverse. Especially since it’s pretty clear that Zuckerberg extrapolated the name Meta from metaverse. At this point, Facebook has yet to state what its intentions are regarding the name debacle, thus it still remains to be seen what their ultimate decision will be.
