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Facebook sues social network for trademark infringement

The leading social network is launching legal action against a teaching website for use of its 'book' trademark.

By Jennifer Scott, 26 Aug 2010 at 09:44

Facebook has begun legal proceedings against another social network, claiming it has infringed on its trademark.

Teachbook is a relatively small site in the US, designed for teachers to share lesson plans, instruction videos and help create courses together.

However, its use of the word “book” in its title has caused a stir at Mark Zuckerberg’s company and has resulted in a court filing at a US court in San Jose, California.

“Facebook has become a worldwide social, cultural and political phenomenom,” the filing read. “With fame comes irritation. Here… Teachbook.com… rides on the coattails of the fame and enormous goodwill of the Facebook trademark.”

The filing also claimed Facebook had made complaints to the site beforehand but it hadn’t taken any action to rectify the situation.

“Despite Facebook’s protests, [Teachbook] has wilfully and deliberately persisted in its misappropriation of the Facebook brand,” it continued, “forcing Facebook to protect its user community and the strength of the famous Facebook trademark through this action.”

We contacted Teachbook for comment on the case but it had not responded to our request at the time of publication.

This isn’t the first case of its kind. It was recently revealed BSkyB had launched a number of actions against Skype for its use of the “Sky” trademark.

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3 comments

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It's really

It's really getting out of hand, the world is being run by lawyers constantly looking to increase their wealth, and clogging up courts with spurious legal actions. the major governments of the world need to get together and say that's it, Unless competitors use an exact copy of the name, font style and logo then all's fair, the English language belongs to the UK so should we be suing everyone else for using it? NO. facebook should be getting sued anyway for running such an insecure system. I stopped using it when they removed the abuse reporting email.

By dfruk on Friday Aug 27

Is this a joke?

or is Facebook really a sociological study to see just how abhorrent a company can be before people actually stop using it. I could understand if Faceboook was i rival social networking site but the name and the purpose are both quite dissimilar. As for the "enormous goodwill of the Facebook trademark" is that the goodwill generated by a total lack of regard for their user privacy, the hosting of fan sites for murderers, the high profile suicides of someone bullied through their site or maybe bring legal action against people for using the word book in their title?

By leighwill on Friday Aug 27