Social Network Seeks 'Face' Time at Trademark Office

Image via CrunchBaseThe U.S. Patent & Trademark Office has issued a notice of allowance on Palo Alto, Calif.-based social media giant Facebook's December 2005, application to the USPO to trademark the word face.

Facebook must cough up a $100 fee to USPO and may either request up to a 36-month extension or prove within the next six months that it uses the face trademark, according to a report by the Canadian Broadcast Corp. News. In filing a statement of use, Facebook would have to show that beyond the use of the word in its domain name, that it actually employs face on products in commerce, according to the TechCrunch Web site. No opposition was filed to the Facebook proposed trademark.

Were face to be trademarked,  Facebook would  be unable to restrict the use of the term in ordinary commerce unrelated to Facebook's business of providing telecommunications services, such as chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards, according to a Daily Mail story.  It remains to be seen whether face, a generic term, will be trademarked.

Facebook is not one to play favorites among its syllables, and has recently gone on the warpath against entities that use book in their name. Online teacher community Teachbook.com, for example, was targeted by Facebook recently in a trademark infringement lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California (Facebook, Inc. v. Teachbook.com, LLC, Case No. CV10-03654).