Earlier this week, Facebook, Inc., the popular social networking website company based in the United States, publicly announced that beginning Saturday, June 13th at 12:01 a.m. U.S. EDT, users of the Facebook® website will be allowed for the first time to create personalized URLs for their Facebook® pages (e.g., facebook.com/yourname).
Facebook, Inc. has created an online form for rights owners to reserve their trade-marks, for the purpose of preventing their trade-marks from being adopted as usernames by Facebook® users. If you would like to avoid having third parties claim facebook.com usernames consisting of your trade-marks, you may wish to take part in the reservation of your trade-marks according to the procedure outlined below before this Saturday, June 13th when the Facebook® website begins accepting usernames from Facebook® users.
Trade-mark owners can reserve their trade-marks as facebook.com usernames on the Facebook® platform by submitting information (including your company name, title, registration number) to Facebook, Inc. through their trade-mark protection contact form, available at http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights.
It is not clear whether Facebook® will accept reservation forms for common law trade-marks or marks that are not yet registered or the subject of applications in countries outside of the United States. If you are interested in reserving your trade-mark as a facebook.com username and/or you have any questions concerning the foregoing, please contact us.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.