Facebook sued over 'Timelines' trademark

Social networking giant Facebook was slapped with a trademark lawsuit over its new Facebook Timeline profile feature, a tech site reported Saturday (Manila time). Tech site Mashable reported the suit came from Timelines.com, which said Facebook’s feature may “eliminate Timelines.com" and cause confusion that it [the online site] is affiliated with Facebook. “Indeed, Facebook’s ‘Timeline’ offering and its misdirection of users attempting to access Timelines’s offering is intended to prevent Internet users from accessing information about Timelines.com and to allow users to instead use Facebook’s ‘Timeline’ offering," Mashable quoted Timeline.com as saying in a court complaint filed in the US District Court for Chicago. Facebook unveiled its Timeline feature last week and will roll it out over the coming weeks. It turns a Facebook user profile into a scrapbook that lays out a user’s digital history. In contrast, Timelines.com lets users view and create multimedia timelines for historical events such as the American Civil War or the rise of Apple Inc. Timelines.com partners with The Boston Globe and other media organizations to create timelines for different sports teams. Mashable noted Timelines.com also owns the US trademarks for “Timelines," “Timelines.com" and “Timelines&design." Also, Mashable reported Timelines.com claimed Facebook even destroyed its Facebook Page (http://facebook.com/timelines) in favor of a redirect to an introduction page about Facebook’s new user profile pages. But it noted Timelines.com’s Facebook page appeared to be working normally though as of Friday afternoon. — LBG, GMA News