domain names ending with book

Question

I want to make a humorsite, not a social network, but a humorsite. But my domain name ends with book.

Do you think facebook would make a fuss about it?

Answer 1

I assume you're asking because of the TeachBook lawsuit.

Overall they'd only have a claim if you're in the same industry, very roughly defined as the vague "social networking," or are willfully misleading people into thinking that there's an association between you two. So as a person who's not your or anyone else's lawyer, you're probably fine. But if you plan on adding features any more social than about standard commenting, you might want to be careful.

Answer 2

There's a reason why a lot of sites use crazy made up names rather than names with common words like "book" or "bay" that a popular site already uses in part. It avoids the problem entirely and allows easy and defendable trademarking.

While they might not go after you, you'll be living on the edge of a volcano should they become overly litigious like some companies do. Also, while you may have a strong case against them, you will still have to defend yourself in court and that can be very costly. Large corporations often count on this high legal cost to force ordinary folks to give up domains.

Answer 3

Of course no. They can't block a website just because it have a book in its domain name.

Answer 4

There was a similar case in the UK over the prefix "Easy" by the owner of EasyJet etc, who was setting up his EasyEmpire.

In that case I believe he won the domain arbitration because the owners of EasyPizza had chosen an orange and white colour scheme that "was likely to cause confusion". So while he doesn't own the rights to start a combined word starting with "Easy", he did own the brand of "Easy combined with Orange and White, etc."

It will be interesting when the FB case actually comes to court - but the different jurisdictions weaken the parallels - EasyGroup had already started a number of companies called "Easy...", while Facebook is claiming Brand Dilution.