Facebook Inc., one of the largest social media giants worldwide, has filed a Trademark Application
for securing a trademark for the term ‘Book’ in Europe, after many
years of successfully registering the generic words ‘Face’ and ‘Book’ in
the United States.
Filed by Facebook in June 2019 with the European Union Intellectual
Property Office (EUIPO), the application has been accepted by EUIPO and
is presently under assessment, with a decision anticipated later. The
ideology of trademarking such common words is to prevent the small and
fledgling firms from using the name of established brands to offer
products and services similar to the brands’ ones, thus confusing the
customers and making false income on others’ names.
The application filed by Facebook holds a list of hundreds of
relevant products and services such as electronic game software,
software for modifying photographs, wearable peripherals for computers,
and electronic radio components.
If the application gets approved, it will enable the word ‘Book’ that
initially recognized as a traditional paper-based data storage format
to join the terms, including Face, Wall, Poke, Like, the letter F, and a
specific shade of blue in the big list. Moreover, the social media
giant will start preventing its competitors from infringing on the word
‘Book’ – something that will not be an unimportant effort; but,
undoubtedly within the power of Facebook and legitimate teams associated
with it. Nevertheless, the bad news for Facebook’s competitors,
especially fledgling and small companies is that the social media giant
has proved to be very happy to chase and shut down the firms for
perceived Trademark Infringement.
Although it may not be the adept time for Facebook to seek positive
results in Europe, where the American giants incur a low amount of trust
and goodwill, still the social media giant is consistently striving to
complete its trademark collection as it has already got the word ‘face’
registered over a decade years ago, thus making it believable that its
new application too will be granted.
In the US, several other terms in addition to ‘Facebook,’ – ‘Face’ and ‘Book,’ are now secured as Facebook’s Intellectual Property (IP), for example – ‘BOOMERANG,’ ‘F8,’ ‘LIKE,’ etc.
Facebook is not the only giant or company seeking to obtain Trademark Protection
for generic words, for example – Ohio State University and fashion
designer Mark Jacobs are too making efforts to be the first in getting a
Registered Trademark for the term “THE” with the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).
Don’t forget to follow us on social media:
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/trademarkmaldives/
Twitter – https://twitter.com/trademarkmaldiv
Pinterest – https://in.pinterest.com/trademarkmaldives/
No comments:
Post a Comment