I have my persistence.xml with the same name using TopLink under the META-INF directory. Then, I have my code calling it with:
persistence.xml
TopLink
META-INF
I also had this error but the issue was the namespace uri in the persistence.xml.
I replaced http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/persistence to http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence and the version 2.1 to 2.0.
http://xmlns.jcp.org/xml/ns/persistence
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/persistence
It's now working.