In its haste to rebrand itself, Facebook may have committed trademark infringement. A Chicago-based outfit called Meta Company says it is going to sue the social media giant, which now calls itself Meta. But Meta is hardly the only entity involved with the metaverse.

       Many companies are jumping into this space, seeking to carve out their own empires. The word “metaverse” was coined in the 1992 novel, Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson. Snow Crash was published the year before Tim Berners-Lee invented HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and laid the foundations of the World Wide ...