The Sky is Falling! New Facebook Usernames Will be the End of Trademark Protection as We Know It

In just over six hours, Facebook will begin permitting its users to obtain "vanity" URLs for their Facebook profiles.  According to the popular social networking site,

"The one place [on Facebook] where your identity wasn't reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer. The URL was just a randomly assigned number like "id=592952074." That soon will change.  We're planning to offer Facebook usernames to make it easier for people to find and connect with you. When your friends, family members or co-workers visit your profile or Pages on Facebook, they will be able to enter your username as part of the URL in their browser. This way people will have an easy-to-remember way to find you."

Facebook will begin permitting its users to obtain these new vanity URLs at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow.

According to PC World, "[v]anity URLs are becoming an important part of one's online social life, as it makes it easier for others to find you by just typing your name after the service's URL (i.e. http://www.twitter.com/pcworld)."  Twitter and LinkedIn have always offered plain-language user names and its become something that social networkers now expect.

Despite the ubiquity of vanity URLs, Facebook's announcement has apparently caused a number of law firms and news outlets to sound the trademark protection alarm.  (See here, here, here, here, and here). 

If you use Google to search for "Facebook username trademark protection," 245,000 pages are returned.  Similar searches for Twitter and LinkedIn return 126,000 and 29,100 pages, respectively.

So why is everyone talking about trademark protection in relation to the new Facebook URLs?  It's simple:  Facebook has publicized a means for trademark owners to prevent the registration of a username that infringes on a registered trademark.  Though Twitter and Link edIn have have vanity usernames for quite a while, neither site publicized a method for preventing their use to infringe trademarks.

Here, Facebook has presented a reasonable procedure to address a potential problem which has not been particularly widespread in other social networking venues.  The publication of this solution has caused others to exaggerate the danger of the problem addressed by the solution.

Could someone infringement one of your trademarks using a Facebook URL?  Yes.  However, except for its scale, Facebook doesn't present a potential danger any greater than any other social networking site or web forum that allows its users to select plain-language usernames.

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Comments

[Kevin Thompson]

Good post, Jonathan. I believe it was a brilliant marketing move for Facebook, as now so many businesses are having internal conversations about Facebook, and whether they should have a presence there.