Earlier this week Facebook, Inc. publicly announced that as of Saturday, June 13th at 12:01 a.m. U.S. EDT, Facebook users will be allowed to create their own personalized URLs for their Facebook pages (i.e., facebook.com/ yourname or facebook.com/trademark). As with the creation of new top level domains, this presents a perfect opportunity for cyber squatters to infringe on valuable trademark rights.
Avoiding Infringement
Facebook, Inc. has created mechanisms trademark owners can use to avoid infringement. Specifically, they have created a registry where trademark owners can register their marks preventing users from registering URLs containing their name and have a process in place where infringement can be reported.
- Trademark owners can prevent others from registering URLs containing their trademark on the Facebook platform at no cost by submitting basic trademark owner information via their trademark protection contact form available at http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights.
- Facebook presently has a platform where the infringement of intellectual property rights can be easily reported through an IP protection contact form available at http://www.facebook.com/copyright.php?noncopyrightnotice=1
Despite the procedures in place which allow for reporting and stopping infringement, in light of the low burden and zero cost in submitting the rights form, coupled with the worldwide popularity of Facebook, we highly recommend taking proactive registration steps now rather than dealing with possible infringement at a later date.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
