Facebook, the social network, has filed a lawsuit in the Northern District of California, claiming trademark infringement. The case, “Facebook, Inc. v. Cyber2Media, Inc. et al”, involves a lot of domain names, which are essentially “typos” and other names that closely related to the Facebook.com domain name.
From the lawsuit, Facebook is suing these “typosquatters”:
“Defendants’ typosquatter schemes infringe on Facebook’s famous and distinctive trademarks (the “Facebook marks” or “Facebook’s marks” and confuse the consuming public with respect to whether Defendants and their commercial activities are associated with Facebook. Defendants’ schemes also diminish the goodwill associated with Facebook and its marks, injure Facebook’s reputation, breach enforceable agreements between Defendants and Facebook, interfere with Facebook’s business, and unjustly enrich Defendants… Facebook therefore seeks and order cancelling Defendants’ rights in their typosquatter domain names or transferring those typosquatter domain names to Facebook, awarding Facebook damages, and providing other relief.”
The following is a list of defendants in the case:
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
Michael Suggs
Facebook lists the cause as 15:1125 Trademark Infringement (Lanham Act). The lawsuit was officially filed on July 22, 2011.
Here is some more information about this Facebook lawsuit that’s just been filed. As soon as I get a copy of the other documents I’ll post them here.
Elliot also has information about the lawsuit. He also has posted a copy of the lawsuit if you’d like to read it yourself.
A hat tip goes out to Dan Cera for letting me know about this.