May 2011.Facebook challenges a trademark filing with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) by Shagbook, a site for "no strings attached adult dating" located in the United Kingdom. In its filing PDF with the USPTO, Facebook claims that Shagbook's logo is "highly similar" to Facebook's; its services are similar to those offered by Facebook; and that Shagbook was designed to "trade off the fame" of the social network.
Several months later (August 2011), Shagbook answered Facebook's USPTO filing with its own. In that document PDF, Shagbook questions whether the word "facebook" can be trademarked. It argued that the "term was in common use in the English language well before [Facebook] began using the term in connection with its services." It added that Facebook was "engaged in trademark misuse and trademark bullying by abusively using oppositions, litigation, and threats of the same to maintain a competitive market advantage."
All the trademark wrangling hasn't prevented Shagbook from doing business as usual on the Internet under its off-color name.
December 2011. Facebook files a three-page "cease and desist" letter to Hunter Moore demanding he remove all Facebook screen grabs from his site, Is Anyone Up? Tagged as a "revenge" website, the Net locale allows it members to post nude photos of people along with screen grabs of their Facebook profiles. Moore ignored Facebook's letter and his website continues to do its thing on the Web.
May 2012.A federal district court judge in California punts on a trademark infringement case brought by Facebook against a Norwegian website called Faceporn that bills itself as "the number one socializing porn and sex network." According to a decision PDF handed down by Judge Jeffrey White, his court had no jurisdiction to hear the case because the website's activities weren't directly aimed at residents of California. It takes more than registering someone else's trademark as a domain name and posting a website on the Internet to prove that an act was directed at California, he wrote. Facebook is mum on whether it will pursue its case in Norway.
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