Mastercard

Many entrepreneurs still consider trademark registration to be the least important step in the process of establishing their brand. This can become a big issue. Not registering a trademark from the start leaves a company vulnerable to potential copycats and other forms of brand infringement that can significantly damage its reputation and hamper growth.

It has been some time since Meta (former Facebook) has announced its change of the business name [1] and also much wider transition of its activities into metaverse. Since then, much has been written about that but let us allow some additional thoughts on “Why Meta?” and what does it mean from the trademark perspective.

By definition, a trademark needs to display sufficient distinctiveness to identify the origin and ownership of the products and services. That means generic and descriptive words should be avoided at all costs. The landmark case in United States PTO v. Booking.com B.V, however, proves that a generic term combined with “.com” or another top-level domain can be registered as a trademark if there is sufficient evidence of consumer recognition.