Facebook sues start-up for using 'book' in its name

[Cricket]

Teachbook.com has two employees and fewer than 20 users signed up for its free Web community. The site has yet to officially launch.

But the Northbrook, Ill., company, which provides tools for teachers to manage their classrooms and share lesson plans and other resources, has been thrust into the spotlight by social networking giant Facebook, which sued the start-up for using "book" in its name.

Facebook sues start-up for using 'book' in its name
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-f...,3625119.story

I am absolutely blown away by this. If FB wins, something is seriously wrong here....

[Cricket]

Another look at this controversy
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/20...-the-word-book

What are your thoughts?

[Attorney Jaffe]

From the little I know about this case (I browsed the complaint) if I were contacted by teachbook for advice I would tell them that facebook has made a good argument and wouldn't you rather spend $100,000 plus in advertising your new brand rather than spending that amount of money to defend a name that currently has no brand recognigion?

[devonshire]

This is truly an unfortunate situation. Facebook is such a large social network and teachbook is targeted to a niche audience of teachers. If Facebook succeeds in winning this case then it will set a precedent for many others who utilize common terms to describe their sites. Ebay has already succeeded against a cosmetics site. The truth is as attorney Jaffe points out it would be better to change the name now and spend the money on getting the site online with another domain name. That's not justice though. It's called being crushed by a corporate giant.

[TheRACK]

I agree with Jaffe, someone as big as Facebook who has an unlimited budget could end up hurting your overall goal, I think they should stick to there orginal concept with helping teachers then instead of sticking to principle

PS: I wonder if they could change there name, but still advertise the TeachBook .COM and have all traffic refferred to the new business? Could be a way to market the concept & foward to the new brand.

[Belinda]

Now that's laughable "...forcing Facebook to protect it's user community"

Look out Aaron, SEO Book and it's community next.

Seriously though how or why is it allowed to trademark such a generalised term as 'book' ? I do agree with the other posters though, change name and spend the money on that branding.

[Hyphen]

Will never fall through.

[Cricket]

Now they want "face" too....
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/27/tech...dex.htm?hpt=T2

[DrewryMedia]

Originally Posted by Cricket

Another look at this controversy
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/20...-the-word-book

What are your thoughts?

They are starting to be bullies. And, I think also he might be doing that because he is scared he might be potentially giving up 84% of the company, from that contract "if it stands up in court" he allegedly signed years ago, when the social networking site was in it's infancy. And, his head might be too arrogant and big now to think like a regular person. always quick to disable someone's account for almost no reason!

[ScriptMan]

The lawsuit seems to be good for business. We have 1590 guests and 52 members online. That was copied from their site at about 1PM EDT.

Heck the free publicity may exceed the the lawyer fees. Worst case they settle and get a redirect for a period of time.

My take: it is a social community using the the "book" word as a part of its name. If they were selling books or doing anything other than a social community I would agree that Facebook is the big bully.

As I see it right at the moment it is an aggressive trademark defense and one of the criteria for maintaining a trademark is an aggressive defense of that mark.

[imoonwalk]

If they hire expensive lawyers they will get what they want.

[Hades]

I don't think it was their purpose to ripoff FB's name when creating that website, at least it is not so obvious as the name does make sense when you look at the website's content.

Here in Argentina a few months ago a communications company launched a new social networking website named "caraface", being "cara" the spanish for "face" (in full english the name would be: faceface), being a social network inspired by facebook I am sure THAT IS a ripoff, but so far they haven't had a single issue with copyright infringement. Wondering how long it will take until FB sues them.

[mporgsoft]

Originally Posted by ScriptMan

My take: it is a social community using the the "book" word as a part of its name. If they were selling books or doing anything other than a social community I would agree that Facebook is the big bully.

As I see it right at the moment it is an aggressive trademark defense and one of the criteria for maintaining a trademark is an aggressive defense of that mark.

I agree with you 100%. Teachbook is in the wrong here! When I saw the name prior to reading or going to the website I thought sale of text books and Facebook should be ashamed of themselves. Seeing that it is a social site they are trying to capitalize off of facebook's name.

[humbledmarket]

Originally Posted by devonshire

This is truly an unfortunate situation. Facebook is such a large social network and teachbook is targeted to a niche audience of teachers. If Facebook succeeds in winning this case then it will set a precedent for many others who utilize common terms to describe their sites. Ebay has already succeeded against a cosmetics site. The truth is as attorney Jaffe points out it would be better to change the name now and spend the money on getting the site online with another domain name. That's not justice though. It's called being crushed by a corporate giant.

Well at least even if they did that. They would be getting a lot of publicity with this case. I've never heard of them until I read a couple of threads about this case.

It's beneficial to them. So you can think of this as win win

[Casiohelp]

Sounds like a bullly to me. I am starting to hate the name Face and Book! There are a lot of company's with the name "Soft" in them and Gates doesn't have a problem with it.

[adrtech]

I agree with Casio. To me FB try to make something weird here. With more than 500 million customer, FB should focus on their business rather than identify the competitors.

[mmaloney]

It's very normal for such large companies to do this.

They are simply protecting their trademarks by suing others with a sort of similar name.

It's not that they see this Teachbook.com as a competitor or a threat, it's just that they must sue others on a regular basis to show to court that have done everything to protect their trademark, so even if they fail it doesn't matter to them as long they have sued them.

It's a crazy world, Adobe Flash, Microsoft, Google, Paypal they are all doing the same thing.

I know people that got sued by Adobe Flash for using the word "Flash" on their webpages or in their domain name. You will normally not hear about these cases, as their lawyers will tell you that you can not make their legal threat public.

[adrtech]

Teachbook.com is indirect competitor and FB should not worry about that. This issue will make teachbook.com famous in short period of time and easily get hit by now.

[neil_buzzerchat]

facebook really needs to enhance features for pages, they are very limited features in facebook for removing/block fans unwanted.

[adrtech]

Yes, a lot of people still using FB defaut setting and it expose themselves to a handful of dangerous outcomes especially personal informations. Start edit your privacy now!.