Court orders Meta to stop using name in Brazil

A São Paulo court has ordered Facebook’s parent company Meta to use its name in Brazil for 30 days after a local computer service provider with the same name filed a lawsuit alleging damages caused by third-party disruption. ordered to stop within a short period of time.

The decision was made on Wednesday and reported by Brazilian newspaper Valor late Thursday evening.

Meta, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Mark Zuckerberg’s technology company can appeal the decision.

Barueri-based Meta Serbicos, which registered its brand with Brazil’s National Institute of Intellectual Property in the late 2000s, has been accused of mistakenly filing more than 100 lawsuits since Zuckerberg’s company changed its name in 2021. It was stated in the judicial proceedings that it had been included in the I deactivated my Instagram profile because I was pretending to be someone else.

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The São Paulo appeals court ruled that US Meta must pay 100,000 reais ($20,201) for each day it does not comply with the decision.

The company, formerly known as Facebook, changed its name in a rebrand focused on building a “metaverse,” a shared virtual environment that it believes will be the successor to the mobile internet.