Facebook seeks to trademark 'face'

BANGALORE, INDIA: In a bizarre move, social networking major Facebook is going to get the trademark rights to the word 'face', which the company feels, would stop other companies from using it to damage its brand name.

According to a Fox News report, the company's efforts is all set to bear fruit soon, as the opposition period for the trade mark application is over. Citing the U.S Patent and Trademark Office documents, the report said a 'Notice of Allowance' has been issued to the company.

Over the next six months the social networking major will have to demonstrate that it is using the trademark and then file a 'Statement of Use', following which it would get the final approval.

However, the trademark rights to 'book' have already been applied for by an obscure North Carolina corporation called myEworkBook Inc., adds Los Angeles Times.

Though the company's myeworkbook.com is a non-functional website, its business is described in the trademark file as "an online community for registered users to participate in discussions, get feedback from their peers, form virtual communities, and engage in social networking featuring educational purposes", the report added.

Fox News said, in Facebook's case, the trademark would cover "telecommunication services, namely providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars".

It said a trademark may help Facebook throw the book at the competition — and Facebook faces a wealth of it.

GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registrar, said Fox News that it has 53,000 domain names containing the word 'face' in its databases. The company estimated that the Internet has 89,000 domain names containing the word "face" just in the .com world.

So the trademark may save the 'face' of Facebook for sure! But what about the 'book'?