Last October, Facebook changed its name to Meta, declaring its desire to be a leader in creating a meta universe. However, just now it turned out that by renaming the technology giant appropriated the name of another company, Meta, which had existed for a long time.

No, we are not talking about the Ukrainian Meta.ua, which could also sue Zuckerberg if it wanted to. Another (relatively) small business decided to protect its right to a trademark.

Former Facebook was sued by META (or Meta.is), a company that combines art with immersive technology and creates installations with VR, AR, video and music for international festivals. The company now claims that Facebook’s renaming violated META’s established brand.

“On October 28, 2021, Facebook seized our META mark and name, which we put our blood, sweat, and tears into building for over twelve years… Today, after eight months of trying to negotiate with Facebook in good faith to no avail, we were left with no choice but to file a lawsuit against them,” says the statement on the company website.

Facebook is accused of a blatant attempt to grab intellectual property and use it in the same space where META has been operating for over a decade. The plaintiff is dissatisfied with the fact that now their company can be associated with the former Facebook, which in turn is associated with numerous scandals.

“Meta can no longer provide goods and services under the META mark because consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Meta’s goods and services emanate from Facebook and that Meta is associated with the toxicity that is inextricably linked with Facebook,” the plaintiff’s company says.

META has a valid trademark, but may face an uphill battle in court. Facebook has already filed many trademark applications for its services since the new name became official. Meta (Facebook) has not yet commented on the lawsuit.