[pp.int.general] Facebook and trademarks

[Patrick Mächler aka Valio]

On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 6:10 PM, Gregory Engels
<Gregory.Engels at piratenpartei-hessen.de> wrote:
> It looks to me that it is not Facebook, who is steering into a questionable
> direction,
> but the U.S. Patent And Trademark Office that keeps issuing very strange
> trademarks.
> Remember Microsoft is having the trademark on "Windows" (and sueing Lindows,
> a Linux deistribution bach in 2002)

Of course it's not solely relying on Facebook inc. in the same sense
as it's the solely relying on Amazon inc. when they get issued a
"1-click" patent.

>> Facebook battles over name with Lamebook, a parody website
>>
>> http://voices.washingtonpost.com/blog-post/2010/11/lamebook_and_facebook_battle_o.html
>> (and even started to censor it)
>> http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/22/facebook-blocks-lamebook/
>
>
> To be fair, the CTO of Facebook addmitted it was a mistake.

I previously already considered whether I should mention the
censorship news item, as it's not that much related to my actual
message (therefor the brackets).
The intended message was: Facebook inc. is rather aggressive when it
comes to defend their brand even so in situations where there is no
intention to compete in a commercial way with them. In this specific
case I fail to see a danger of trademark dilution at all.
The lawsuit between Facebook inc. and Lamebook has just begun and I'm
looking forward to it's result.

- pat