Palo Alto, Calif. — Facebook filed a lawsuit Thursday accusing 25 companies of infringing its trademark name.
First reported by Bill Hartzer, the lawsuit includes companies who have similar domain names, including facebobk.com, facemook.com, wwwfacefook.com, ffacebook.com and faecbook.com.
Known as “typosquatters,” because they hope to profit from people mistyping the site they’re looking for, Facebook is actively looking to close down these and similar sites. Owners of such sites profit by advertising on the page, and in some cases even use them to host malware.
“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,” the lawsuit read.
“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.”
Facebook previously won a case back in 2007 against a cybersquatter that owned Face-book.com, and has scored many other victories against similar companies.
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3ultmtv (Bill Hartzer)
http://tinyurl.com/3kp2ngc (VentureBeat)
Photo by flickr user Steakpinball, used under Creative Commons license
