Gartner, aided by what legally remains of META, has won a provisional order in the Hamburg regional court against Meton Group. Amongst other things, Meton is forbidden from using its web domains and probably will need to change its name.
This is an outcome that no-one could have imagined. After Gartner bought META, that business was largely liquidated; it could not have surprised Gartner that numerous ex-Meta-coworkers established Meton Group. As we explained in our article ‘Meta succeeded by Meton‘, the firm was created partly in order to fill the market gap created by the closure of META in the German-speaking region.
While Meton as a business is not affected by it, the loss of its website is clearly a major disruption. Gartner also understands that legal action has a chilling effect on Meton’s potential customers in the conservative German market-place.
P.S. A little more information: The court ruling means that the Domains metongroup.de and metongroup.com may not be used any further, and obstructs a conference already announced for September. Those websites are already offline. Co-founder Andreas Zilch told the German Computerwoche “our goal remains unaffected: covering and considering local requirements and customer needs in the IT Research and Advisory market on a high quality level.”
P.P.S The firm has a new brand name and URL: see this post.
