
Patent Office Agrees To Facebook’s “Face” Trademark - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/23/patent-office-agrees-to-facebooks-face-trademark/
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pierrefar
Naively, I ask: does this affect Apple's Facetime?
<http://www.apple.com/mac/facetime/>

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jjcm
No. Or rather, not yet. Right now it only has a trademark on face when used in
the context of "book". Now if they update their statement of use to include
the word "time", or face as it relates to video chat software/media; then
(assuming the statement of use was approved by the USPTO) apple would have
legal annoyances. I highly doubt that it would hold up in a court case vs
apple if it were approved.

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ja27
Wasn't the term "face book" in rather common use at many colleges and
universities? Isn't that where they got the name? What if they'd called
themselves yearbook.com?

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jawee
It was <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook_(directory)>

I wouldn't be surprised if some colleges still have their own facebooks on
their website.

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lesterbuck
When a given word becomes too strongly associated with a single company, then
the word itself, in all its uses, becomes protectable by that company. The one
case I know of is the word "gallo" (Spanish for rooster). The Gallo wine
company has such a strong mark that they regularly crush people that try to
use the word in any context, such as a small hispanic artist in San Antonio
that named his company "Puro Gallo". I'm not saying I agree with this, at all,
but that is one aspect of current trademark law. It took the Gallo family
decades to establish the strength of their mark. I would guess that the entire
idea of "Facebook" will be rather quaint long, long before the idea of "face"
can embed itself into general commerce enough to be protectable as a word in
all uses.

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sukuriant
Do I understand this to mean that Facebook is now warring over the two,
distinct halves of its name?

For the past while, I've seen Facebook fighting over "Lamebook" and now
they're pushing for a trademark on "Face". Do they want a controlling interest
in all:

Face* and *book?

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jjcm
"Do they want a controlling interest in all: Face* and *book?"

Yes.

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sukuriant
Can they really do that?

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AgentConundrum
Wait... maybe I've been grossly misinformed, but I thought you couldn't
trademark, for lack of a better term, a single normal word.

Isn't this why Google is called "Google" and not "Googol"?

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rbanffy
Just try to market an integrated office suite called "Office", an OS called
"Windows" or a computer called "Apple" to see what happens...

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AgentConundrum
_Just try to market an integrated office suite called "Office"_

Microsoft owns the trademark to something like "Microsoft Office" not the
_actual word_ Office, right?

Also, doesn't OpenOffice still exist?

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citricsquid
They own it when used in defined context:

> Telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and
> electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users
> in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment
> subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.

So if you use "Face" ... in any of those areas you're infringing on their
trademark, however if you named your cleaning product "facebegone" you'd be
fine.

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AgentConundrum
I didn't realize you could do that. I guess I learned something new today.

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zabraxias
I see this as an excellent way to give foreign competitors a boost while
making sure you can sue the domestic competition.

