Fraud Charges Against Facebook, Sean Parker, Mark Zuckerberg to Stand

http://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/v?pno=92049206&pty=CAN&eno=14

by thinkcomp • 18 years ago

10 11 18 years ago

ttabvue.uspto.gov

rantfoil• 18 years ago

Fraud charges? This looks like a link to a proposal for cancellation of Facebook's trademark.

Aaron, can you provide some commentary here?

thinkcomp2• 18 years ago

There were three counts in the initial Petition to Cancel: priority of use, genericness, and fraud against the USPTO. Facebook's attorneys protested very strongly and repeatedly to have the fraud count removed, but with this ruling the USPTO denied both of Facebook's motions.

jhancock2• 18 years ago

This does seem odd. As someone who has just filed a trademark, I can say the USPTO is "paid money from the filer" to do a search for name conflict. It is the responsibility of the filer to also search for reasonable conflict. But the purpose of the trademark office and the fees you pay it are for this search.

There must be something really wrong here for fraud charges to stand.

gojomo2• 18 years ago

Maybe ThinkComp and Hubert Chang can start a company together, "The Real GoogBook".

bdr• 18 years ago

From the plaintiff's website: "Inventors of 'The Facebook,' the first universal face book at Harvard University."

"Think Computer Corporation today filed a Petition to Cancel with the United States Patent and Trademark Office regarding Facebook, Inc.'s registered trademark on the term "FACEBOOK," after Think Press was denied the right to advertise its upcoming book, Authoritas: One Student's Harvard Admissions and the Founding of the Facebook Era for trademark reasons." http://www.thinkcomputer.com/corporate/news/pressreleases.ht...

irinotecan• 18 years ago

It's difficult to follow, and I haven't read all the legal proceedings, but here is what I have gathered:

* Think Computer coined the term "The Facebook" to describe an in-house portal system at Harvard University which they built, back in 2003.

* At some point Mark Zuckerberg registered "thefacebook.com" and started making a competing student portal. He later renamed this to facebook.com (thefacebook.com still redirects to facebook.com to this day)

* Think Computers was content to let sleeping dogs lie for the most part, but decided that they wanted to publish a book about their portal system and the title of the book contained the words "the facebook".

* Facebook.com sued Think Computers for trademark infringement and got advertisement for the book blocked.

* Think Computers countersued facebook.com, claiming fraud in their trademark, because Mark Zuckerberg was classmates with Think Computers CEO at the time and knew that he had previously coined "the facebook" for his portal system.

* Facebook tried to get the fraud count removed, presumably because if they are found guilty, penalties may extend beyond the loss of the trademark "Facebook".

* The court just ruled that the fraud count will not be removed for the upcoming trial.

thinkcomp2• 18 years ago

I don't want to comment in great detail here, but this analysis is factually incorrect. No civil suits are involved. If you're interested, you should really just read the proceedings.

gojomo2• 18 years ago

I heard there was a printed student guide that was informally called 'the face book' at Harvard (and possibly other places) before any of these online projects got underway.

If so, I suspect the key question is whether that term can be repurposed to become a trademark for vaguely similar, but broader, commercial online services, and which actions of Zuckerberg and others may have served to create a defensible claim on that mark.

Fraud Charges Against Facebook, Sean Parker, Mark Zuckerberg to Stand

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