An Important Message from our Trademark Practice Concerning Facebook

A number of our clients have recently had issues with unauthorized or deceptive usage of their trademarks on social networking websites. This week, Facebook announced that beginning Saturday, June 13, Facebook users will be allowed for the first time to create personalized URLs for their Facebook pages (e.g. facebook.com/yourname). For obvious reasons, this may create both opportunities and problems for trademark owners -- many of whom may find their trademarks adopted for use by others on the site. For companies with a consumer-facing business model and strong, recognizable trademarks, it is important to think about how these changes (and social media in general) will impact their branding strategies.

 

Click on the PDF link above to view the full alert.