The company will allow users to register any name they like
after the main Facebook address, such as: www.facebook.com/nike.
This raises the prospect of individuals registering names that are
trade marked to companies or organisations.
The company has put in place a pre-registration process by which
companies can list their trade marks and bar others from
registering them as names before registration begins.
Trade mark owners can fill in a form listing the marks that they
want barred from registration. If a name has already been taken by
the time the company finds out, they can fill in an IP infringement
form that alerts Facebook to the problem.
"[We want] to help our users avoid potential disputes concerning
usernames that may be protected by intellectual property rights,"
said a company explanation of its actions on its website. "In order
to do that, we have encouraged rights owners to contact us if they
want to reserve/protect certain names."
John MacKenzie, an intellectual property specialist at Pinsent
Masons, the law firm behind OUT-LAW.COM, said that Facebook's
actions were a sensible response to an obvious problem.
"Facebook is one of the world's biggest communities, with a
growing commercial community," he said. "Increasingly consumers
will look to those communities for reviews of products and even to
buy products."
MacKenzie said that the practice of registering someone's trade
mark as a Facebook name is analogous to cybersquatting on web
domain names.
"This is the same as if someone registers any domain name with
another company's trade mark in it. In the UK there is case law
deciding that just holding the domain can amount to unlawful
conduct, and can be stopped," said MacKenzie.
Facebook has taken other steps to combat opportunistic
name-squatting. It will not allow anyone who registers a profile
after it announced the name feature to apply for a name in the
first place.
"Eligibility is limited to anyone who joined Facebook before
usernames were publicly announced," it said. "This decision was
made to prevent people from creating new accounts just to take
advantage of reserving a username."
It is also restricting people's ability to pass a username on,
which will also help to stop trade in desirable names.
"Once you have claimed a username by clicking the "Set Username"
button, it is not possible to edit it, or to transfer your username
to a different account on Facebook. Additionally, when an account
is removed from the site, its username will not be made available,"
it said.
There is no fee for submitting a trade mark to Facebook's
pre-registration process.
Editor's note, 12/06/2009: This article
initially suggested that Facebook allowed users to register domain
names. As an eagle-eyed reader pointed out, that is
inaccurate: it only allows them to register URLs. The domain name
is still facebook.com. Apologies for the error.
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