Lamebook Sues Facebook Over Trademark Infringement 108
designersdigest writes "Here's a head scratcher, at first glance at least: Lamebook, a hilarious advertising-supported site that lets Facebook users submit funny status updates, pictures and 'other gems' originating from the social network, is apparently suing Facebook over trademark infringement."
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Your geeky anger is understood and justified in this context!
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Wrong. The only difference between a nerd and a geek is the former is socially awkward.
I agree with the poster who commented that this isn't 'news for nerds' though, but anyone who hasn't see the quality of /. stories decline rapidly over the last five years or so must be new here.
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If you really don't care, then why are you commenting on the article about it, rather than merely moving on to the next Slashdot story?
Ok (Score:2, Insightful)
RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
"So here’s what’s going on here. The complaint is for a declaratory judgement, which means Facebook threatened to sue Lamebook over trademark infringement, and now the tiny company is suing them first in order to get a preemptive decision from the court that there is, in fact, no wrongdoing. Most probably, Lamebook is doing this to keep the lawsuit in Texas."
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If this is true, it's one of the smartest lawsuit moves I ever seen. One where you literally want to loose (as long as it's not a loss where their victim is granted the "trademark") to set a precedent so you can stop the other company from doing the same all over the country. That is priceless.
Lamebook should lose on the basis that... (Score:2)
As long as Facebook is around, Lamebook is totally redundant.
Re:RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
Wrong. If Lamebook is granted a declaratory judgement [wikipedia.org] in their favor it will be exactly as if Facebook had sued them and lost.
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wow, you're dumb.
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If it makes you feel better, it's gotten two flamebaits, two insightfuls, and an informative. I liked the informative rating better.
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Your knowledge of the legal is clearly on par with your level of bridge ownership.
Here's what's REALLY ACTUALLY happening (Score:5, Informative)
Lamebook is quite obviously a parody site, something that is protected by the First Amendment. Facebook (which has already tried to claim trademark on all ----book sites [slashdot.org]) has already threatened to go after Lamebook. If they do so, it will be tried in whatever Facebook-friendly court district that Facebook wants.
In order to help protect themselves, Lamebook is suing them preemptively to declare that they have the right to their parody site and avoid being put in a position where Facebook simply outspends them in litigation.
I say good for 'em, and I hope they win. This is a MUCH better long-term strategy than simply not responding to Facebook or mocking them [thepiratebay.org] until they get shut down.
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I've hated facebook since before it was cool to hate facebook.
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I hated Facebook before "before it was cool to hate Facebook" I have since drank the koolaid.
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It looks like Facebook wasn't suing all sites with the word book it, it was *social networking* sites that have book in them. And frankly, "Teachbook" is a poor name for a social networking site, even if it is just a specialty one focusing on teachers. The naming plainly sounds like they're trying to ride the coattails of the Facebook trademark.
It's still protected. (Score:2)
Are they riding the coattails of Facebook? Hell yes, they never said they're not! The site's tagline is, "The funniest and lamest of facebook." But again, it's parody, which is allowed by the First Amendment.
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Well... they're still online, aren't they? (TPB)
In their own words,
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Ok... after looking over the facts I am taking Facebook's side.
Lamebook may be a parody site, it may even feature nostril rape, but that site is an absolute mess and looks like shit, and its basically a shitty blog of images. Based on technical merits alone it should be wiped off the Internet by any means possible. This kind of shitty design shouldn't be encouraged.
Facebook is doing the right thing.
Welcome to 4chanbook (Score:4, Funny)
it may even feature nostril rape, but that site is an absolute mess and looks like shit, and its basically a shitty blog of images.
You're going to love /b/ ;-)
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Well.. not really.
There is a difference.. 4chan *is* an image board and really nothing more. It's content and the type of images (and I was implicitly endorsing nostril rape as positive, mind you) are driven entirely by the users. The site carries very little aesthetic or even direction (although it has some) on its own.
Lamebook is supposedly catering to a specific purpose, but it is just using whatever piece of crap blog software they could find for it, putting up butchered, pain in the ass pngs, which is
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Lamebook is quite obviously a parody site, something that is protected by the First Amendment. Facebook (which has already tried to claim trademark on all ----book sites [slashdot.org]) has already threatened to go after Lamebook. If they do so, it will be tried in whatever Facebook-friendly court district that Facebook wants.
In order to help protect themselves, Lamebook is suing them preemptively to declare that they have the right to their parody site and avoid being put in a position where Facebook simply outspends them in litigation.
I doubt that they were worried about this going to court, even in a Facebook-friendly court that's one-thousand miles away from them.
The crux of their panic here was that the Facebook lawyer threatened the nuclear option, to "shut down their personal Facebook account if they didn't comply" [lamebook.com] (and that, I'm afraid they wouldn't have been able to do anything about, it's Facebook's right to shut down any personal Facebook page they desire, just like it was Rupert Murdoch's right to shut down any MySpace account
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Parody is not a blanket defense to allow someone to copy another by trying to make it funny:
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody#Copyright_issues [wikipedia.org]
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_v._Acuff-Rose_Music,_Inc [wikipedia.org].
I can't see anywhere on that site where they are commenting on the author's work. They are producing screenshots of various updates and things they think are amusi
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My understanding is that trademark infringement and / or dilution are related to the likelyhood of causing confusion in the marketplace. Calling yourself "The funniest and lamest of facebook" in your logo is likely to clarify that the site in question is not facebook. That's not parody, but they should be adequately protected. Still, they should have chosen another font.
Also, does Facebook own the exclusive copyright to the content, or do the posters?
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regardless of who owns it, it may be owned by each individual who made a comment on some of those long status updates, it is extremely unlikely they have permission from each person in the thread to repost those.
So even if it's not facebook who owns the content for copyright, they're likely on the hook to someone. Someone mentioned earlier something about the Facebook ToS taking any work you create on there.
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Why is it that summarizing the article, point for point, gets a score of 5 informative?
Perhaps it's because:
1) Nobody expected anyone to actually read the article.
2) The summaries presented do not actually summarize the article, but simply copy and paste the first couple of sentences.
I should just start summarizing every article on Slashdot, without adding any insight or information, just to raise my karma.
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So wait, are you saying that no one reads the articles, and that the summaries of submissions just contain the first little bit of the back-end article?
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It's Simple But Where's the "Advertising" tag? (Score:1, Insightful)
Don't do it. Don't reinforce this behavior. Let them gamble and let them lose. They're making a mockery of our justice system
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Quoting TFA - Emphasis mine.
So here’s what’s going on here. The complaint is for a declaratory judgement, which means Facebook threatened to sue Lamebook over trademark infringement, and now the tiny company is suing them first in order to get a preemptive decision from the court that there is, in fact, no wrongdoing. Most probably, Lamebook is doing this to keep the lawsuit in Texas.
According to the complaint, Facebook counsel first contacted Lamebook back in March 2010, asking them to cease an
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They are not making a mockery of the system, the system has been at the funny farm for quite some time. They are just playing by the same 'rules' that Facebook are. Going after legit businesses with 'book' in their name is just as farcical as this.
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Not entirely without precedent. I understand that Lindows was not a parody and therefore is not in the same situation, but it's hardly the first time a huge company has sued a much smaller one just for having a similar name.
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I think your comparison is without merit. Lindows was obviously trying to ride on the coat-tails of Microsoft by using its name as a way to 'confuse' people into using Linux versus Windows. Linspire's own lawyers didn't even want to defend the case, as the article points out.
This on the other hand, is parody, a key ingredient to a successful defense.
They're defending themselves. (Score:5, Informative)
Did you even read the article? They're not the ones who initiated this action. Facebook has already contacted them several times threatening to sue, and they have every reason to believe they will [slashdot.org]. If they do, then Lamebook, which has a site that is protected by the First Amendment, will be forced to defend themselves through a trial and umpteen appeals in a faraway district, likely one that is very unfriendly to them.
All they are doing is asking for a declaratory judgment that they have done nothing wrong so that they won't be litigated into either bankruptcy or submission. From there, some news outlets picked up the story, because it is of interest to the tech community.
Will they benefit from the free advertising as a result? Maybe so, but that doesn't change that the motive is probably primarily self-preservation, not revenue generation.
Re:It's Simple But Where's the "Advertising" tag? (Score:5, Interesting)
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lamebook also seems to have a business plan that revolves around stealing copyrighted content from individuals facebook pages and posting it on their site without even the courtesy of attribution. Even if you hate facebook for being a narcisstic circle-jerk, they don't seem to be the bad-guys here, just clueless.
Re:It's Simple But Where's the "Advertising" tag? (Score:4, Informative)
Copyrighted by whom? Not the Facebook user who posted it; you waive your right to copyright the moment you sign up for a Facebook account. There is an argument to be made that Lamebook is profiting off of Facebook's "copyrighted" content, but Facebook didn't create the content. They just force their users to hand over rights to it. It's a clusterfuck all the way around, and unfortunately the only ones left with no rights at all are the users.
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but you can make use of copyrighted content for parody... isn't that what lamebook is?
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Yes you can, and I'm actually on Lamebook's side in this; I personally feel it's a legal parody. I just pointed out that in the end, the actual content creators (the users) have no say in the matter either way.
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No, it's not. legal parody requires that the the person creating the parody use the material to comment on the original author's creation.
Lamebook has done nothing of the sort. They're simply posting pictures and content without comment as far as I can see. About the only thing they create is the blurry stuff and the titles, neither of which make comments about Facebook.
see
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Isn't the Lamebook site itself a commentary on Facebook?
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it's extremely weak commentary.
Since some of the content they post isn't "lame" and instead is posted to indicate it's funny, it doesn't seem to be particularly good commentary either.
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You see to make a parody, requires creative effort, not merely copying other's work and making slight changes. the style is copied. The musical "Westside Story" is a parody of "Romeo and Juliet"; Lamebook is not a parody of Facebook.
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Westside story is not a parody, it might be ridiculous, but it's not a parody.
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Copyrighted by whom? Not the Facebook user who posted it; you waive your right to copyright the moment you sign up for a Facebook account.
That's not even remotely true. It's the second item in the Facebook terms [facebook.com]:
You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook
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They don't force any rights transferm except they do say they need the license to distribute the copyrighted material that user post on their site to distributed.
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I suspect they feel it's most definitely 'gone viral'. You might not have heard of it, but Lamebook is definitely a popular website with a lot of fans.
They are not after Slashdot's traffic, they are trying to protect themselves from Facebook's hefty law department.
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This is not a frivolous suit. It is a justified declaratory judgement suit. Outfits like Facebook use public threats to sue to spread FUD. They drag out "negotiations" indefinitely with no intention of actually suing. The purpose of a declaratory judgement suit is to put a stop to that.
Facebook threatened to sue first... (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
"The complaint is for a declaratory judgement, which means Facebook threatened to sue Lamebook over trademark infringement, and now the tiny company is suing them first in order to get a preemptive decision from the court that there is, in fact, no wrongdoing."
Just dealt with this this week (Score:1)
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[snip] Facebook / markmonitor.com decide for some reason that it infringes on their trademark based on this page: http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/Facebook [customerse...eboard.com] Which leads to the following big waste of time/resources simply to tell their legal team to leave them alone: 1) they receive the complaint 2) they contact their registrar http://www.namesilo.com/ [namesilo.com] to find out what problems if any they have with their domain 3) NameSilo recommends some trademark attorney and 4) the attorney files a response (http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/images/CustomerServiceScoreboard_Facebook_Response.pdf) which more or less tells Facebook to please leave them alone and that their trademark infringement case is baseless. Facebook ended up dropping the threat. But this goes to show you how ridiculous the situation has become. Sites like Facebook employ services like Markmonitor.com to basically send out thousands of trademark and/or dmca threats.
One of the quirks of American trademark law is that if a trademark holder does not aggressively "defend" its trademark it risks losing said trademark. But before you decry this as just another vulgar americanism, remember that this is not just a really dumb aspect to trademark law -- It's a jobs program for lawyers. N.B.: IANAL
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One of the quirks of American trademark law is that if a trademark holder does not aggressively "defend" its trademark it risks losing said trademark. But before you decry this as just another vulgar americanism, remember that this is not just a really dumb aspect to trademark law -- It's a jobs program for lawyers.
What's the alternative? A government bureaucracy of 'trademark police' whose job is to go out and enforce private businesses' IP? The way it is makes the most sense. The burden of protecting I
Now that's (Score:1)
I don't infringement here in any way. (Score:1)
you're next "phonebook" (Score:1)
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Re:Parody yes, but lamebook gets ad revenue (Score:5, Informative)
parody is covered by the first amendment
The 1st Amendment matters only for the government's actions against you, not a private company's. The issue here is purely about copyright and trademarks, and the law that allows parody is Fair Use, not the 1st Amendment.
lamebook is generating income (ad revenue) based on facebook's trademark
Which is not forbidden. Fair Use rights are not restricted to non-commercial uses. Just look at parodies like Space Balls, a major movie that grossed $34M.
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and parody requires that the content created under fair use be used for or as commentary on the original author's work. I can't see any evidence that lamebook has done that, and it'd be too late to start now.
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Well, honestly I can't see any evidence that Space Ball commented on Star Wars. I mean, they riffed off it, but they didn't so much comment on it as make Jewish jokes about it.
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You can take that up with the supreme court and george lucas. It's the supreme court that stated that was a requirement and george lucas who would have to sue them.
Facebook Statement under Truth Serum (Score:5, Informative)
According to the article, Facebook has publicly responded with
It’s unfortunate that after months of working with Lamebook to amicably resolve what we believe is an improper attempt to build a brand that trades off Facebook’s popularity and fame, they have turned to litigation. We are confident in our position and believe we will prevail in court.
What they would be saying under sodium pentathol:
We are miffed that after several months of bullying Lamebook with threatened litigation over their building of a business that takes natural and legal (but you'll never get us to admit it) advantage of the social phenomena created by Facebook, under a brand name that no human being would come close to confusing with ours, they feel forced to defend themselves in a court of law. We are certain that our deeper pockets will overwhelm justice in court.
"First amendment" (Score:3, Informative)
Seriously, is everyone retarded? Yes, the first amendment dictates that the US government shall not infringe on its people's right to free speech and assembly, and yes, parody is (with certain conditions) exempt from copyright as Fair Use.
These two facts have nothing to do with each other.
So STFU about amendments already.
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Sounds like an own goal... (Score:1)
Forget what Lamebook has to gain from this. People are going to see Facebook and Lamebook side by side in the story and say "Facebook feels Lamebook is a threat? Did Lamebook offer something Facebook felt threatened about losing?" What they should have done is to ignore Lamebook from the start. Its the best way to discredit them.
I, for one, understand the ethos... (Score:1)
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This is common practice... (Score:2)
...to nip legal huffing and puffing in the bud - you can go in circles for months and months basically arguing "did not, did too!" with the puffer while potential damages accrue, or file for declaratory judgment, in which you present the evidence to a judge who (you hope) says "yup, did not, now bugger off." (Any parallels to running to the teacher on the playground are purely uncoincidental). For example look up Symantec v. HotBar (DirectRevenue?): a spyware company was sending threats to an A/V vendor for
facebook could end this now... (Score:1)
On facebooks' trademarks: Prior use would be easy to establish. "The phone book" has been in use way longer than facebook has been existing. Remarkably, it is also a directory that enables people to communicate with each other and is also widely used as a data mine by advertisers as well.
The thumbs sign was documented to be "invented" b
Class action against Facebook (Score:1)
Can everyone in the world sue Facebook? Considering everyone actually has a "Face" and Facebook used it as a trademark?
who came first (Score:1)
Lamebook or Facebook, who came out first with their name, end of story, no?
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You just reminded me, I haven't been to Failblog.org all morning. Be back in a few hours.
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I don't think Lamebook could hold a candle to Failblog. At least Failblog has a wider assortment of content aside from people talking to each other on Facebook.
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