LordP

November 25, 2010 at 2:29am

I totally hate the idea of 'face' anything so this whole brouhaha is completely unimportant to me.

But I am toying with the idea of an anti-facebook....'ASSBOOK'...website. Maybe I should trademark/patent 'ASS' - this would of course put MaximumPC in jeopardy and you guys would be in serious doodoo, so be very careful how you use MY trademark in the future!!

Trooper_One

November 24, 2010 at 1:24pm

Before facebook got popular, face-pic was another old time social network site.  How are they going to dispute that?

SleepyCatChris

November 24, 2010 at 12:02pm

You can't patent a word! It's a trademark.

babelfish

November 24, 2010 at 10:58am

I haven't clicked through to the application, and IANAL but I will make the following assumptions:

1) It's a trademark, not a patent

2) It's for a limited area of business (in fact, you even list what areas it is).

It doesn't "patent" the word "face," it doesn't even mean that NO ONE can use the word face in any other copmany or product name.

It does mean that no one can use the word "face" in a product or company name that works in the same industry as Facebook (parody and satire usually excepted). This is to prevent customer confusion and protect the brand that Facebook has created (for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure Facebook is destroying it all on their own).

I would guess that Future US has a similar trademark filed on the name of this very magazine. It obviously doesn't prevent anyone from ever using the word "Maximum" but it would prevent someone from releasing a magazine called "Maximum Computer" who tried to deceive people into thinking it was MaximumPC.

I enjoy getting worked into a tizzy about Facebook as anyone else, but MaximumPC is better than this.

Neufeldt2002

November 24, 2010 at 10:17am

One more reason to hate trademarks, patents, and facebook. I for one will use face as much as I want, and I can guarantee any refrence to facebook will not be paid.