Facebook Sues To Bar the Use of 'Book' in Site's Name

HA! we're discussing if we can use the word book now...seriously facebook you weren't the first people that started a social networking site.

And for that matter it's the people who choose things like nomenclature .... people where i'm at say Kleenex when they mean tissue as Kleenex is a brandname but you don't see people getting sued over that...mimicry is the most obvious form of flattery and besides, facebook is written as one word they do NOT own the rights to slam another word against one and say "We did it no one else can".. they invented a word off of using two root words... they own that combo they don't however in doing so take your right to compound words all together. That would be like this site suing http://www.webforo.com/ for using a word in front of foro. It's a travesty, if your not trying to gain users by making people think your affiliated with another group I don't see an issue with it especially if there is no style or code similarities the only thing in common is a name....

seriously how many words are there that can explain how you feel right this second....
how many of you can describe that in 2 words...
and of those how many ways can you relay that EXACT thought with only two words in more ways than one...

If they win this case it will effect every single person here... how many domains will be available if they were to take the legal use of such common words as book ; we are going to come to a point where everything is illegal if you aren't already rich and we will have domain names like hiicantgetabetterdomainnamebecausefacebookisactingchildish.com
 
Josh Arcadia said:
Well money turn stupid to ppl... I love FB but this is stupid! I hope they lost
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In the article, it says facebook doesn't want any money, just for the company to change their name so it sets a precedent.

Once the precedent is set, facebook can use it for future cases like this one without having to go through the battle every time.
 
JVCode said:
Can't use that domain, it has 'Facebook' in it.
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That's too funny i didn't even think about it when i was typing it :)

I would use it and they could file suit if they wanted, they would lose more battling me than they would gain, also if they want no one to be able to use facebook at all together in any part of a domain name they need to purchase everyone of those( i hate reading books and i wanna start a site called facebooksnow.us as a nonprofit group for people battling a fear of printed books totally joking but for examples sake)... a domain registrar cannot sell you a domain name you cannot use.. how you use it is where the legality lies. If your not trying to bite off of the theme of the website there's nothing they can do, this is a blown out example of course but in the case of this thread were talking about teachers sharing info not people networking to make profit, I mean one of the members there could be teaching the plaintiffs children for all we know. I mean look there's youtube and then the various other ones with tube in the name including adult based ones... it just proves they are confident that they don't need to file suit because those sites exist because of theirs. and not to mention it looks like facebook and some others may be guilty of some dirt themselves but I can't attest to the validity of this as the date is off for me at any rate it says it was posted tomorrow and here is the link

edit heres another link i guess its true we'll see how this plays out http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-allen-20100827,0,40010.story
 
They (TeachBook) are using a likeness of Facebook's name to start up a social website for teachers.
They (teachbook) are trying to cash in on the likeness of the name to attract people.

I think that Facebook has a right to protect its Trademark, its not so much the name but how you use it.

If teachbook was a site to sell teachers books, I doubt facebook would care as much as they do.

I do not necessarily agree with their tactics, but you cannot blame them for protecting them selfs. If you do not actively protect your trademark from what I understand you might be able to loose it.
 
well all im saying is it didn't hurt youtube when ****tube ***tube or any other tube site came out in fact it showed people that hey youtube did it so good we gotta do something like that, flattering and free recognition advertisement , reverse of what sounds like the plausible scenario. Apply that to facebook to me that says they don't do anything cutting edge on their site, let it get old and they are worried even an average joe can make a better booksite than them. See if they had just let this go people like me would say damn look people want to be like facebook i thought that site sucked maybe ill check it out and facebook may have gained a user from another site instead of me wanting to protect the little guy and now hoping that company gets folded by this lawsuit.

Could someone link to this use of the likeness, because facebook is two 4 letter words compounded and using teachbook comes nothing close to that there's an odd # of letters (9 and only four are the same) not to sound like im reaching im just saying i don't see their position. Marrion webster ( nothing against your books guys i've learned a lot from them I making a point with your company since you guys are obviously content without copyrighting the entire english language , thank you for your maturity )wrote a dictionary back in the day, we better watch out or if this trend continues we'll be getting sued by them for talking to each other, we should invent a new language to prevent this.

If the colors and letters and layout don't look the same they should back the eff up and i say it that way because it is neccesary for an understanding at how serious i take a frivolous lawsuit like this. All modern tech has been possible through the means of looking at one persons invention whether it be nature or man and improving on it, they are just killing progress. However Kuma, if you show me a logo ( theme ;layout) from them that looks like it rips off facebook i will make a formal apology to them right here and make it clear that I agree with you. But as far as selling books i think thats worse, that would be trying to catch profit from sales rendered through name recognition but a text communication log with pictures and a place to write your notes and signatures for EDUCATORS ,sounds like a yearbook to me and also I feel like facebook jacked classmates.com's idea and just marketed it differently and added a feature to it that they happen to be being sued for now.

My point is unless they use that name, along with any of the following: color scheme, font, graphical layout, functional coding , unique only to facebook, they are not doing anything wrong mcdonalds makes french fries so if you cut up some spuds at your house know you should be sued because you didn't invent them All im saying is they are being sued themselves for stealing an MS employees work and i wouldn't be suprised if that person took action in light of companies suing people for stuff they assumed credit for themselves.
 
JVCode said:
It's a shame F4ceb00k.com is taken, there's a likeness, but neither word relates to a FACE nor BOOK.
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LOL i would have to say though, even i would think someone grabbed that just to use facebook as a jumpoff and that's from the bias view of someone that hates that whole company for polluting the minds of youth.
 
For those who haven't been keeping up, the inevitable has happened: http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/26/trademark-face/

Yes, this is getting petty.
Kuma said:
They (TeachBook) are using a likeness of Facebook's name to start up a social website for teachers.
They (teachbook) are trying to cash in on the likeness of the name to attract people.

I think that Facebook has a right to protect its Trademark, its not so much the name but how you use it.

If teachbook was a site to sell teachers books, I doubt facebook would care as much as they do.

I do not necessarily agree with their tactics, but you cannot blame them for protecting them selfs. If you do not actively protect your trademark from what I understand you might be able to loose it.
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Yes, because millions of people are flocking from Facebook to Teachbook. I mean, for goodness' sake, they even used a similar theme as Facebook! /sarcasm

Its trademark is Facebook, no more, no less. Face is a common word, and book is a common word, so if anything, sites that used either word before Facebook was launched should sue Facebook, just to kick them in the teeth. More realistically, though something like this:
Anthony Parsons said:
I remember Aaron Wall did this with a larger company taking him on when he was just an individual, and SEO's and webmasters, bloggers, all came out and donated in small amounts to give him the funds to fight it... suddenly the big company backed off as he could hire extremely good lawyers. All the left over got donated to a charity... which he provided a transparent report on donations, costs and then the left over donation. Very effective...
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needs to happen, so his royal King of the Internet can get dethroned in a public and humiliating manner. Mr. Zuckerberg is on a very dangerous power trip, and this is going to bite him and his little social networking site in the butt. I don't care how many millions and billions users you have or how much money you make, you go after petty stuff like this, you'll become a target, just like the RIAA/MPAA have after they resisted changing to keep up with technology. Bad comparison, but the end result will still be the same: You anger the internet (and possibly 4Chan), then you can pretty much kiss everything you know and love good-bye.

I don't see him changing anytime soon, either. Countless interviews with him pretty much state (paraphrasing) that he wants to control the web (see: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_zuckerberg_says_the_age_of_privacy_is_ov.php). And while tech-savvy or privacy-savvy people like us are at least aware of these claims and intentions (whether you like them or not), there are still nearly 500-million users on that one (just ONE) website, who will blindly accept whatever Facebook throws at them, and I think they (Facebook) knows that they can do this, so the habit won't change at all. In fact, it may get worse.

What can we do? Simple: Support decentralized social networking. There needs to be an alternative to Myspace and Facebook that doesn't involve one company hosting our information. It's 2010, open-source software is making strides (slowly, but surely), so why can't we use a quality product that will make Facebook wet their pants? No doubt it will take time (maybe even years) for a change to really be significant, but if we start deleting our Facebook accounts, move to the same decentralized service, people will notice after they ask you what your Facebook username is and find out that you don't have one.

We can't be afraid of change. Nobody though Facebook would take off, but we needed something better than the hell-hole that is Myspace, so why can't we do the same here?

/rant
 
Kuma said:
They (TeachBook) are using a likeness of Facebook's name to start up a social website for teachers.
They (teachbook) are trying to cash in on the likeness of the name to attract people.

I think that Facebook has a right to protect its Trademark, its not so much the name but how you use it.

If teachbook was a site to sell teachers books, I doubt facebook would care as much as they do.

I do not necessarily agree with their tactics, but you cannot blame them for protecting them selfs. If you do not actively protect your trademark from what I understand you might be able to loose it.
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No they are not trying to cash in on Facebook. Teachbook is not a social networking site anything like Facebook.

Teachbook is to be a discussion forum for teachers all over the country to be able to discuss teaching techniques and tips, exchange lessons, books, etc. They are teachers, and it seems simple and only right that the word "book" would be part of that.

I saw on CNN that they're also going to try to trademark the word Face. :eek: So this means that a cosmetic company or some facelift surgeon wouldn't be able to use the word Face for their name or website.

Are you kidding me?!?!? I mean geeze the words Face and book were around a helluva lot longer than facebook was.
 
David Thomas said:
For those who haven't been keeping up, the inevitable has happened:

What can we do? Simple: Support decentralized social networking. There needs to be an alternative to Myspace and Facebook that doesn't involve one company hosting our information. It's 2010, open-source software is making strides (slowly, but surely), so why can't we use a quality product that will make Facebook wet their pants? No doubt it will take time (maybe even years) for a change to really be significant, but if we start deleting our Facebook accounts, move to the same decentralized service, people will notice after they ask you what your Facebook username is and find out that you don't have one.
We can't be afraid of change. Nobody though Facebook would take off, but we needed something better than the hell-hole that is Myspace, so why can't we do the same here?

/rant
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First off Dave this was no rant, you are completely warranted in these thoughts and in my mind are completely doing the RIGHT thing by making it known.

This is precisely the premise of why i would like the option for XF to support video hosting as nothing against youtube, ( for the size they are and what they manage they are GREAT) i just want my community's videos to be my community's and I want them coming to my site to see them. All with the same principle in mind, i dont't want to rely on someone elses server, uptime, bandwidth, or rules policy when I can have my own and follow my game-plan.




Peggy said:
No they are not trying to cash in on Facebook. Teachbook is not a social networking site anything like Facebook.

Teachbook is to be a discussion forum for teachers all over the country to be able to discuss teaching techniques and tips, exchange lessons, books, etc. They are teachers, and it seems simple and only right that the word "book" would be part of that.

I saw on CNN that they're also going to try to trademark the word Face. :eek: So this means that a cosmetic company or some facelift surgeon wouldn't be able to use the word Face for their name or website.

Are you kidding me?!?!? I mean geeze the words Face and book were aroung a helluva lot longer than facebook was.
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HAH well we will see cosmetic companies saying "try our cover up to make the front side of your head look blemish free and hockey players will have a head to head battle for the puck instead of a faceoff, facials will be called extended frontial cranial beauty treatments. I think i may try to TM the word eye so i can sue all the news groups that use eyewitness news in their name and use they're money to sue facebook for blowing this out of proportion.

I mean, will i even be able to show my face anymore? should I change my avatar here so they don't file a lawsuit against me for referencing the word face by an image? Why are the courts even taking this seriously. They should show the frivolity of people once they gain power, it goes to their head and they forget that they are still one person(group/entity) , I suggest that if everyone were to make a site and TM their domain....facebook wouldn't be able to use one word on their page. Think about it how many words are there and how many people are there, do the math...if everyone was allowed to privatize single words we wouldn't be able to have meaningful dialog .

I find it ironic that people for years couldn't say anything without risking death and now hundreds of years in the future , companies are trying to take that back words in front of us and they are trying to bar teachers of all people from using the word book.
 
Maybe Mark had a professor he didn't like at his little Harvard college, who knows. But you have a point, you're not going to make very many friends by going after teachers, of all people.

This is why you should try to create your businesses with as unique a name as possible. This serves two purposes:
1) You make up a word that has never been used before, there's no way on Earth anyone will be able to sue you for using it and get away with doing so, and
2) You created it, you registered it as a legal trademark in your country (I hope), so if someone tries to infringe on that word, you won't become the laughing stock of the internet (like Facebook).
 
I agree that its very dangerous for someone to have that attitude, considering they are a spec on the face of the www compared to Google, and not even Google have that bad an attitude.
 
Peggy said:
No they are not trying to cash in on Facebook. Teachbook is not a social networking site anything like Facebook.

Teachbook is to be a discussion forum for teachers all over the country to be able to discuss teaching techniques and tips, exchange lessons, books, etc. They are teachers, and it seems simple and only right that the word "book" would be part of that.

I saw on CNN that they're also going to try to trademark the word Face. :eek: So this means that a cosmetic company or some facelift surgeon wouldn't be able to use the word Face for their name or website.

Are you kidding me?!?!? I mean geeze the words Face and book were aroung a helluva lot longer than facebook was.
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Can you honestly tell me that you do not believe that the site teachbook was not trying to capture anything with the specific name "TeachBook"? Surely there could have been thousands of other names that would have had nothing to do with Facebook or sound anything like Facebook.
 
Kuma said:
Can you honestly tell me that you do not believe that the site teachbook was not trying to capture anything with the specific name "TeachBook"? Surely there could have been thousands of other names that would have had nothing to do with Facebook or sound anything like Facebook.
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By this reasoning Microsoft should go after any company that uses Micro or Soft in their name that has to do with program development.

Facebook wasn't the first site to use -book-. There are actually older social networks that had the word book in their name; the concept of using book as a social term isn't even remotely new either.

It also has nothing about protecting their identity; they're not that similar. Yes, Teachbook is -sort- of a social network, for teachers... For sharing resources... That include books... Used for teaching. 
 
FB actually does not care if anybody else is using the terms "Face" or "Book".

This is just a marketing-stunt of FB in order to show the business-world and the investors-community that FB is serious about making business and defending their brand and business.

FaceBook is working on its IPO and this is just perfect marketing in order to sell their shares highly overpriced.

That´s all.
 
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