The Silicon Valley Insider published a helpful post today concerning the landrush for Facebook “domains” this weekend.
As previously announced At 12:01 a.m. EST, Saturday morning, Facebook will allow users to register user names and domain names (facebook.com/username) to go with them.
If you have a trademark, Facebook has a “Preventing the Registration of a Username” form to prevent someone from registering it.
You have to enter, your company name, title, email, trademark, and registration number. Filling in the form should prevent someone else from using your trademark as a user name.
What happens if an infringer registers your trademark before you fill out the form? In that case, fill out Facebook’s “Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement”.
Finally, if someone maliciously fills out the “Preventing the Registration of a Username” form and blocks you from using your own mark as a user name, although Facebook’s FAQ doesn’t address that, the insider suggests that you fill out the Notice of Intellectual Property Infringement (Non-Copyright Claim) form and providing as many details as known.
What are the benefits of having a username/ddomain name ? Do you mean like facebook.com/gary ?
Yes
Or the name of your business or site
The fine print says you need to have at least 1000 fans to qualify to apply for the name, which is even a bigger problem for trademark holders
So do you own the TM “the domains” ? You prob do, so just wondering do you think that it is original and no one should have “the domains” anywhere in an article or domain? (lol) Are you saying that people start creating more meaningless trademarks to secure their facebook names and create more lawsuits and UDRPs? Let’s face it they are just words. No one should own certain phrases, and it’s just little meaningless squabbles that really should not be governed by REAL law.
Think of the future, or think back to when Asprin was a trademark. Now it is a generic phrase. But at the time they would send C&Ds to whoever used their name on another pill bottle. BUT NOW IT’S OKAY. So do you think the internet is STAGNANT?
They are just words, att is just at with an extra T. It’s not THAT creative, it’s not like they invented LETTERS. They just need a word to brand. Brands come and go, so saying that all brands deserve their facebook is shear rhetoric.
Look at blackberry, they filed a massive lawsuit (and won) for domains containing the word blackberry… BUT WTF IS A BLACKBERRY? It used to be a fruit, now it is a phone… WTF . Seriously WTF. No Berkens seriously stop defending TMs and frivolous archiac outdated laws. Stop saying cybersquatting is wrong. It cannot even be defined! Get off the bandwagon and start thinking like a revolutionary, and not some corporate hearded sheep. FFS.
But facebook is already on the cusp of fading in to the abyss, it’s the next myspace soon to be deadpooled. Then it will be another deleted domain 15 years from now on snapnames. But all those C&Ds they send out to facebookblahblah.com are well worth it now. Got to defend that brand!
Another take on this release:
http://www.law.com/jsp/nlj/PubArticleNLJ.jsp?id=1202431398326&Facebooks_imminent_username_registration_raises_risks_of_cybersquatting_&slreturn=1
There is one problem with these names I can see – you do not own it, Facebook (Twitter etc.) does. They are like registry and registrar without any legislative above them. They can and WILL start charging fees one day…whatever fees they want…I am sure all this is hidden somewhere in the TOS
D. .. . let ’em charge, the beauty of that is you just buy your own .com and redirect Facebook.yourname.com to the facebook page and twitter.yourname.com to the twitter page. . . right 😉 ?
I have registered a username as a domain on Facebook but now I have a band page with the same name and want to transfer the domain name to the band page – How can I do it ? This seems to be a problem on Facebook.
Is there a contact page for Facebook to do this transfer?
Any suggestions greatly appreciated