From geek.com Social networking giant Facebook has just scored a major victory when it comes to brand awareness: they’ve just been granted a trademark on the word “face.”
This has been a long time coming. Back in late August, Facebook took over the trademark application from a site called Faceparty.com, and it’s this acquisition that the USPTO has been mulling over the past few months, and has now granted Facebook a Notice of Allowance for.
What’s a Notice of Allowance? It’s basically just an official notification that Facebook can own face, as long as they pay the fee. In essence, as long as Facebook writes a small check, they own face.
The good news here, though, is that Facebook’s trademark on “face” actually isn’t very broad. The trademark only extends to “telecommunication services, namely, providing online chat rooms and electronic bulletin boards for transmission of messages among computer users in the field of general interest and concerning social and entertainment subject matter, none primarily featuring or relating to motoring or to cars.”
That means that while Apple’s FaceTime standard is largely in the clear, any social networks or bulletin boards intending on riding the coat tails of Facebook’s success by using the word “Face” in their titles would be wise to consider a name change.
As absurd as we think it is for a company to own a trademark on a common word like this, this is one example in which the USPTO has limited the scope of how that trademark can be applied to one fairly specific usage case: social networks. If it’s going to work that way, that’s the way it ought to work.
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