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Facebook has been hit with a lawsuit over a trademark dispute surrounding the new Facebook Timeline profiles.
Timelines.com asserts that if Facebook is allowed to move forward with the launch of Timeline, it “will essentially eliminate Timelines.com” and cause mass confusion that Timelines.com is affiliated with Facebook.
Facebook Timeline, a feature that was unveiled last week and will be rolled out over the coming weeks, transforms the Facebook user profile into a virtual scrapbook that lays out your digital history.
Timelines.com, on the other hand, lets users view and create multimedia timelines for historical events such as the American Civil War or the rise of Apple, Inc. The five-year-old site partners with The Boston Globe and other media organizations in order to create timelines for different sports teams. It also happens to own the U.S. trademarks for “Timelines,” “Timelines.com” and “Timelines&design.”
Timelines.com alleges that Facebook’s launch of Timeline infringes upon its trademarks. Not only that, but the company alleges that the social network destroyed its Facebook Page (http://facebook.com/timelines) in favor of a redirect to an introduction page about Facebook’s new user profile pages. Timelines.com’s Page appeared to be working normally though as of Friday afternoon.
From the court complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for Chicago:
Facebook’s use of the term “Timeline,” and its redirection of Internet traffic from Timelines’ Facebook page to Facebook’s new “Timeline” offering, infringes on Timelines’ federally registered trademarks in that it causes confusion as to the source of the services offered to users of the Internet. Indeed, Facebook’s “Timeline” offering and its misdirection of users attempting to access Timelines’ offering is intended to prevent Internet users from accessing information about Timelines.com and to allow users to instead use Facebook’s “Timeline” offering.
Facebook has dealt with many lawsuits in its young life (many of them from the Winklevoss twins), but this one might present a challenge to the social network.
