Facebook will soon trademark the word “Face”

The social network has just seen its application for the registration of the trademark “Face” validated by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). To approve the filing, Facebook must now pay a fee within three months.

However, the “power” of Facebook over the word “Face” does not extend to all uses, and will remain limited to “telecommunications service” offering chat, instant messaging or discussion forums on general subjects, as explained by TechCrunch.

However, Facebook did not wait for the end of the approaches with the USPTO to address services whose names were too similar to theirs.

This summer, Facebook has filed a complaint against Teachbook, a community site for American teachers. The social network considers that the use of the suffix ‘book’ to appoint a service with social features is enough to create confusion among Internet users by diluting the distinctive mark of Facebook.

In late September, the social network also attacked Stupidbook, a humor site mocking certain statutes of Facebook members. The U.S. company took the view that the whole site is a smear campaign against it. An even stronger criticism Facebook has found is the use of a font “very similar to that used for the Facebook brand.”

Many common names are used by large international companies to designate or name a product or a service. These include Microsoft’s Windows, Apple, Blackberry and Orange.