Facebook's Faces Trademark Suit Over Timeline 83
sydneyhype writes "Facebook's recently announced Timeline feature is up against legal action from an online social-scrapbooking company that has been in business since 2008. The company, Timelines.com, filed a trademark-infringement suit yesterday against Facebook, claiming it is to prevent being 'rolled over and quite possibly eliminated by the unlawful action by the world's largest and most powerful social-media company, Facebook.'"
Re:Maybe I'm Naive But.. (Score:5, Informative)
Timeline.com is just making chronological lists of historical events, which anyone can do with a piece of paper and pen. That idea is probably older than Jesus. How is this a trade-mark infringement? It's like trying to sue someone for making a Venn diagram.
This is a trade-mark dispute not a patent dispute. I don't think anyone is questioning the process of recording chronological information; just the name timeline...
Re:Very weak case (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't help Facebook "stole" the timelines url on facebook.com from timelines.com (which is the url the site was using to bring in their traffic) and used it to redirect to their own offering, essentially stealing the traffic which intended to go to timelines.com and instead went to the facebook version. Considering timelines.com have a valid trademark, Facebook does appear to be in a position where confusion is inevitable.