Facebook Lawsuit Throws the Book at Copycats
All of us need to be careful when it comes to copyright infringement, especially if we are in the social media game, and that is the bottom line of Facebook’s lawsuit. The key to good branding is originality, but sometimes people try to take shortcuts. Here’s a shortcut I would avoid at all costs.
Facebook Lawsuit | What They’re Angry About
In this new age of social media and social networking, many are capitalizing on the success of giants like Facebook and Twitter. Facebook‘s lawsuit is against those people out there that have used their name or something like it in their companies or domain names for their websites. The fact of it is that if you use the name Facebook in your business title, you are likely to get a lot of attention, but you’d better watch out.
Facebook is calling these perpetrators “typosquatters,” which basically means that the URLs don’t use Facebook verbatim but they have domain names like: “facebobk.com, facemook.com, wwwfacefook.com, ffacebook.com and faecbook.com.” So if you were mistype or make a typo when trying to visit Facebook, then you may find yourself at one of these sites. These are the companies that the Facebook lawsuit is targeting.
Its not like Facebook needs to make any more money, but the Facebook lawsuit is pretty legitimate. The practices that these companies are engaging in is trickery, and every good marketer knows that you want to be on Facebook’s good side.
Facebook Lawsuit | The Perpetrators
There are 25 defendents in the Facebook lawsuit and most of them are companies, some others are individuals. I imagine that these companies fall under a different name and when these typos occur, the websurfer is then redirected to the company’s website. I can’t imagine that there are many positive reactions to this, I know that I wouldn’t buy a product or service from a company that engages in these types of practices.
Previous Facebook lawsuits proved victorious for Facebook such as the Facebook lawsuit FacebookStuff.com and KillFacebook.com. So the moral to the story is that you probably don’t want to go head to head with a giant like Facebook, because I guarantee it won’t be a David and Goliath story.
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