4 ms·

Lawsuit May Halt Rollout of Facebook's Timeline

22 points by grellas 15y ago

benbscholz 15y ago
What's troubling is not that another company had a digital scrapbooking service called Timeline, but this allegation: "Timelines has its own page on Facebook. In its complaint, it alleges that the social networking giant is shifting visitors away from this page and redirecting them instead to Facebook’s own timeline page." I can't see how this would be to Facebook's advantage. ALL of their users are getting the Timeline update, what's the point of trying to steal traffic from this other company?
- benjoffe 15y ago
  Sounds like a problem with the fact that users and pages can take facebook.com/xxx urls, it's not future proof. Although the overview page resides at /about/timeline, it's understandable that they want to redirect the /timeline path there too.
  - FreeKill 15y ago
    Yeah, that was pretty poor future planning on facebook's part, they should have made user pages have an extra path variable like facebook.com/u/timeline
- reso 15y ago
  I don't speak for facebook, but I'm virtually certain this is either a fabrication, or a side-effect which is not legally actionable in the slightest. Either: 1) The allegation is that facebook reappropriated Timelines' vanity url, which I know to be a forbidden practice internally. Furthermore, http://www.facebook.com/timelines http://www.facebook.com/timelines goes to Timelines' page, while http://www.facebook.com/timeline http://www.facebook.com/timeline goes to facebook's page about Timeline. Since the other service's name is "Timelines", it makes sense that they would have the vanity url that they appear to now. 2) The allegation is that by naming the feature Timeline, facebook users looking for Timelines' page will, out of confusion, find their way to Facebook's page instead. I have no idea how the plaintiffs think this is actionable if this is their complaint.
fhars 15y ago
That's what you get for trying to trademark everyday words. And haven't they forfeited their trademark by not defending it against http://trac.edgewall.org/timeline?from=2003-08-31&daysback=30 http://trac.edgewall.org/timeline?from=2003-08-31&daysba... ? [Edit: added date]
jannes 15y ago
Why can you even trademark words that can be found in a basic dictionary? Aren't there any limitations on what is trademarkable?
- pork 15y ago
  Windows. Apple. Nuff said.
bennesvig 15y ago
Did they sue the creators of the movie Timeline also?
jrockway 15y ago
Good luck with that. If you name your company after a common word, guess what, other people can still use that word. Don't use the court system to make up for your own poor planning.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]

22 points by grellas 15y ago

What's troubling is not that another company had a digital scrapbooking service called Timeline, but this allegation: "Timelines has its own page on Facebook. In its complaint, it alleges that the social networking giant is shifting visitors away from this page and redirecting them instead to Facebook’s own timeline page." I can't see how this would be to Facebook's advantage. ALL of their users are getting the Timeline update, what's the point of trying to steal traffic from this other company?

benjoffe 15y ago
Sounds like a problem with the fact that users and pages can take facebook.com/xxx urls, it's not future proof. Although the overview page resides at /about/timeline, it's understandable that they want to redirect the /timeline path there too.
- FreeKill 15y ago
  Yeah, that was pretty poor future planning on facebook's part, they should have made user pages have an extra path variable like facebook.com/u/timeline
reso 15y ago
I don't speak for facebook, but I'm virtually certain this is either a fabrication, or a side-effect which is not legally actionable in the slightest. Either: 1) The allegation is that facebook reappropriated Timelines' vanity url, which I know to be a forbidden practice internally. Furthermore, http://www.facebook.com/timelines http://www.facebook.com/timelines goes to Timelines' page, while http://www.facebook.com/timeline http://www.facebook.com/timeline goes to facebook's page about Timeline. Since the other service's name is "Timelines", it makes sense that they would have the vanity url that they appear to now. 2) The allegation is that by naming the feature Timeline, facebook users looking for Timelines' page will, out of confusion, find their way to Facebook's page instead. I have no idea how the plaintiffs think this is actionable if this is their complaint.

fhars 15y ago

That's what you get for trying to trademark everyday words. And haven't they forfeited their trademark by not defending it against http://trac.edgewall.org/timeline?from=2003-08-31&daysback=30 http://trac.edgewall.org/timeline?from=2003-08-31&daysba... ? [Edit: added date]

jannes 15y ago

Why can you even trademark words that can be found in a basic dictionary? Aren't there any limitations on what is trademarkable?

pork 15y ago
Windows. Apple. Nuff said.

bennesvig 15y ago

Did they sue the creators of the movie Timeline also?

jrockway 15y ago

Good luck with that. If you name your company after a common word, guess what, other people can still use that word. Don't use the court system to make up for your own poor planning.

deleted 15y ago
[deleted]