Facebook is continuing its march towards global domination – by trademarking the word ”face”.
The social networking phenomenon, which has an army of 500 million users across the world, wants to prevent other internet sites cashing in on its name.
It applied to the US Patent And Trademark Office (USPTO) to trademark ”face” and today it emerged the regulator had issued Facebook a Notice of Allowance.
This effectively grants them permission to patent the word, as long as they pay an issue fee and sign up to the regulator’s statement of use to secure the request.
Stringent conditions on the statement of use mean the site has to show they use the word ”face” without the conjunction ”book” in order for the trademark to be passed.
The landmark ruling would apply to businesses within the telecommunication services – such as online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards.
Facebook, launched in 2004 by student Mark Zuckerberg, is notoriously protective of its brand and quick to crack down on rogue sites.
Earlier this year it successfully sued a teacher’s community website, called Teachbook.com, for using the word ‘book’ in its name.
It also took action against parody site Lamebook – which highlights humorous Facebook posts – but its claim was rejected.
Anyone using the word FACE in the same sentence as the word BOOK is now in breach of Facebook’s patent? So sue me.
Zuckerberg has seriously lost the plot. As has the USPTO, for allowing this cretinous nonsense.
This is reminiscent of the Metallica hoax, where they had allegedly trademarked the E-F chord progression.
Rather like when Paris Hilton trademarked the phrase ‘that’s hot’. I can understand why they’d do this, but it’s not like anyone’s going to take over from Facebook.
FaceTime anyone?
Facepalm. Get Faced, Mr Z.
And i finally delete my ‘facebook’
Fuck you face book. I’ve always had a face & will always read books.
You can’t patent a trademark – Patents are for technological advanances; trademarks are for protecting goodwill in a name – they are two different IP rights.
It is suprising that they were allowed to register “Face” on its own given that their are probably plenty of domains with the word “face” in them that have chat rooms etc on their websites that pre-date facebook.
The period for opposing the mark appears to have passed, which is a shame because I think it would have been easy to knock out.