Thursday, April 12, 2012

Does Facebook own "book"?

Yesterday, I noted Apple's successful opposition to the registration of "Video Pod" as a trademark. Since I was on the topic of tech companies and trademarks, I decided to follow up on a post I did back in August of 2010 about a lawsuit pending here in the Northern District of Illinois by Facebook against a startup called Teachbook.com.

Facebook originally sued the Chicagoland-based Teachbook.com in the Northern District of California. Teachbook.com successfully moved to dismiss the case for lack of jurisdiction.

That victory was short-lived, however, as Facebook immediately re-filed the case here in Chicago's Northern District of Illinois. Teachbook.com went back to the well with another motion to dismiss, this time on the merits, arguing that the complaint failed to state a claim for which relief could be granted.  The court denied that motion in a thorough opinion. If you're interested, the opinion gives a nice primer on trademark law in general.

Teachbook.com has yet to file an answer, though it has received several extensions of time to do so. Extensions of time to file an answer are often evidence of settlement discussions. We will keep you posted.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments on posts older than 30 days are moderated because almost all of those comments are spam.