Facebook faces off with trade mark owners
15 June 2009
Emma Barraclough, London, and Eileen McDermott, New York
Trade mark owners have been given a reminder of the need to police their marks online after social networking site Facebook revealed that users can apply for their own Facebook urls
Until this weekend, users have been allocated a random number as their Facebook homepage. As of Saturday June 13, 12:01 a.m. EDT, however, they have been able toregister to have their own url in the form of www.facebook.com/name. These will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis.
IP owners are concerned that users will be able to incorporate their marks into that url.
“This is great for users but people will register – as they have done with Twitter – trade marks belonging to other people,” said Nick Wood of domain name consultancy Com Laude.
Facebook is encouraging trade mark owners to register their trade marks with it to...
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