November 2017. Facebook has succeeded in preventing a Czech company from registering FaceHoliday as a European trademark. On 27 October 2017, the Opposition Department of the European Trademark Office EUIPO ruled that FaceHoliday would be infringing Facebook’s trademark rights.

Reputation

The EUIPO decision concluded that Facebook’s worldwide reputation meant consumers would assume the two trademarks were linked. FaceHoliday would thus unlawfully benefit from Facebook’s global reputation and be guilty of trademark infringement.

Care when using Face and Book

Facebook has been quite successful in seeing off new trademarks containing the words ‘Face’ or ‘Book’, having scored victories over Life Book, Facethat, LoveBook, MyPettyBook and SourceBook. So the moral is: think again if you’ve any plans to register names featuring Book or Face.

Bas Kist