Facebook Files Lanham Act Lawsuit

Facebook.Facebook has filed a major Lanham Act lawsuit against alleged cybersquatters (typosquatters)  and websites/companies it believes are infringing on the company’s trademarks or branding. The entire filing can be followed directly on the Justia website. You can read a pdf copy of the lawsuit here.

Defendants  named in this lawsuit include the following:

Cyber2Media, Inc., Daniel Negari, Cleanser Products, Counter Balance Enterprises Ltd., FB Promotions/Freebie Promos, Mackrooner Ltd. Inc., Newgate Services Ltd., Pioneer Enterprises Ltd., Rabbit Gogo Media LLC, SMTM Enterprises Ltd., YourTick, Zilt, Jacob Daniels, Jerry Hui, Ryan Johnson, Eric Jordan, Karrie-Lee Karreman, June Kimchi, Tim Meyers, Ankit Pandey, S. Pace, Elise Petri, Mark Risi, John Souza and Michael Suggs.

Prior to the lawsuit, Facebook used the UDRP system to recover domain names from companies that used its trademark in domain names. The company was previously awarded domain names like Facebok.com, Facebook.me, Facebook.ie, as well as a number of FB domain names owned by Domain Asset Holdings.

Some of the domain names that are referenced in the lawsuit are:

facebobk.com
facemook.com
wwwfacefook.com
ffacebook.com
facetook.com
wwwfacebookde.com
fbacebook.com
facebool.info
faecbook.com
facebooki.com

Bill Hartzer also has information about the lawsuit.

Thanks to  Dan Cera for uncovering this and sharing information about it.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

22 COMMENTS

  1. I owned facecbook.com for two years before i sold it to Michael Suggs/RabbitGOGO in July 2010. It was bringing in 3k in traffic per DAY.

    He then bought faceboop off someone else for 28k 4 weeks later.

    That was my first and last typo i owned.

    Is there anywhere that you can see the full list of typos in the lawsuit??

  2. I just don’t know here. Where do you draw the line with what they’re entitled to? Do they automatically own everything that has face in it? I can see some of the typo ones but like above: faceboop? I don’t see how they can have any rights to it. It’s only one letter off but arguably completely different.

    What about facethebook.com which redirects to aol.com?

  3. thefacebook.com redirects to facebook.com

    I think companies can impede on legitimate domain names without any real right to them.`They indicate in the lawsuit that they’re targeting typo visitors with missappropriate use of trademarks, which I can see in that instance, but what if it’s a
    legitimate website that has nothing to do with facebook?

    For instance if facethebook.com was an actual website?

  4. “so, we can’t no longer use the words “face”and “book”?”

    It is a valid point. No, they don’t own those words individually. But, putting them together, you are asking for a fight.

    You would be safe with these depending on the content.
    FaceMaskBook, FaceCreamBook, BookFaceMassage.
    (none reg’d. Reg. with caution)

    You will not be safe with
    FaceBookie, FaceBooky, FaceBookStore(FB owns it).

    Bottomline, why pick a fight? Eventually, it will cost you more than you will make off of the TM infringement. They have a well educated staff with a large budget just waiting to do their job. And, the staff will receive a yearly bonus at your legal misfortune.

  5. I can understand their rights to defending any domains that actually have their trademarked words – particularly when they are in chronological order. However, anything other than that would be downright domain theft. An example of abuse by facebook would be if they are asking domain owners to hand over any domains that happen to have “FB” in the domain – which they HAVE. I do not see how they can possibly own the rights to two letters of the alphabet, leaving anyone who owns an fb domain is scared silly. Those letters can be an acronym for so many other things ranging from “Farm Bureau” to “Foot Ball”. The arrogance of facebook from it’s origins is downright disgusting.

  6. This is pretty clear cut in my opinion. While some of you are arguing the about why you cant use the words face and book together why dont you get an original thought together and think of another domain name?

    What was the intent behind these names?

    Was it to create a company around a name like facetook.com … hell no, the entire intent was to provide on the facebook TM. Even the landing pages served up showed “you’re a facebook winner”

    You can argue semantics all you want but without intent to do something other than actually profit from the goodwill of Facebook TM then you are all missing a piece of your brain 🙂

  7. Alan, I think the vast majority is in agreement with you that using the words “face” and “book” together in a domain certainly violates their trademark. The beef I personally have is when they think they own the rights to two letter. (FB) I can’t speak for Elliot or anyone else, but I’m willing to bet that most would argue whether they should be entitled to those letters. It’s highly questionable at the very least.

  8. Where are they suing for 2 letters? They are suing based on the typos of facebook.com

    You’re off on a tangent here or I totally missed where any of this is about the 2 letters FB. Of course, they dont own the rights to FB but they ponied up 7.5M for FB.com and if the actually thought they did then you can bet they would have spend $1m in legal fees first before buying that name.

    Datura, explain yourself a little.. where did they say they think they have rights to the letters FB?

  9. @ Alan – what? lol. I’m not on a “tangent” of any kind. I’m simply commenting on Elliot’s post. Anyway, to quote one of the last sentenced from his his post… “as well as a number of FB domain names owned by Domain Asset Holdings.”

    So unless I read the above wrong, this would indeed imply that they went after (and apparently) were awarded “FB” related domains.

  10. That was Elliot being lazy 🙂 and typing FB instead of facebook. If you research the names Mike had they were

    aboutfacebook.com
    facebookbabes.com
    facebookcheats.com
    facebookclub.com
    facebookdevelopment.com
    facebookfest.com
    facebookintegration.com
    facebookjournal.com
    facebookking.com
    facebookland.com
    facebooksafety.com
    facebookstudio.com
    facebookstuff.com
    freefacebookapps.com
    friendsonfacebook.com
    fundraisingwithfacebook.com
    joinusonfacebook.com
    killfacebook.com
    moneyfromfacebook.com
    moneywithfacebook.com
    newfacebookapplication.com

    Nothing FB about them 🙂

    So your assumption did get you off on a tangent ha … no worries, I do it myself lots of times.

  11. @ Alan – It’s all good! I came across this during our discussion: (fb players dot com) This isn’t my site, although I’m curious if the hundreds of sites out there like that one are at risk?

  12. Hi,

    The ” Lanham Act” is the big one if you get hit with one.

    ‘MS” started to use this in late 2006.

    As it is a “Federal Lawsuit”.

    For each domain, you can be fined up to 100K per domain and are subject to pay 3x the amount of revenue each domain earned while owned it.

    Also,

    If say you bought the domain from someone that, lets say owned it for decent amount of time before the current owner….and they can prove the same kind of case against them…they also would be subject to the same type judgments.

    Not the kind of lawsuit you want to be on the wrong end of…even if you win, you lose, as lawyer expenses to go all the way to trial, would be very high.

    Best,

    BTW: On another note: Facebook actually has a “Trade Mark filing for the word ‘face’

    ‘D’

  13. Just my opinion, but I think Facebook may be winning a few high profile court cases, but it seems they are losing alot of fans with their EXCESSIVE corporate bully trademark tactics and damaging their reputation.

    They act like they own the whole alphabet
    when it comes to their trademark and this idea that somehow if your domain has the word “face” or “book” or the lettere “fb” in it, that somehow it violates their trademark rights, and they have the legal right to take YOUR domain that you paid for with hard earned money and registered before
    them is just well completely ridiculious.

    here is just one example of their recent bully tactics when it come to claiming trademark infringement ..

    TELL ME THIS IS NOT RIDICULIOUS.

    http://domainincite.com/1863-facebook-sues-teachbook-com-for-cybersquatting

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Recent Posts

Handoff to Dan on Imported Leads Can be Confusing

0
I've been using the lead import option at Dan.com more regularly. Although the 5% commission is not ideal, transactions tend to move more quickly...

ArtificialIntelligence.com Goes Up for Sale

7
I tried to buy the ArtificialIntelligence.com domain name multiple times over the last 10 years. The emails I sent to the registrant went unanswered,...

EU Gives More IP Protection to Food & Drink Producers

0
Did you know that some well-known food and drink varieties are protected intellectual property regulations? Popular types of drinks and foods that are protected...

Price Testing

1
In 2022, my wife and I decided our kids were ready for some big mountain skiing and we planned a trip to the Rocky...

GoDaddy Making You Sign in to See What You Renewed (Updated)

3
This morning, I noticed something different in a domain name renewal email from GoDaddy. Instead of telling me exactly what domain names I renewed...