face-bookproxy.info - Notice of Facebook Trademark Infringement

Finally when I was thinking corporations don't care about me registering silly proxy domains I get an email Here it is :

We are writing concerning your registration and use of the domain name face-bookproxy.info, which contains the famous Facebook trademark.

As you undoubtedly know, Facebook is the leading online social network service. Facebook adopted the name and trademark Facebook in February 2004 and, since that time, Facebook has actively used the Facebook name and trademark in connection with its online social network service, including maintaining the web site www.Facebook.com. The term Facebook is one of the most famous trademarks on the Internet. Facebook owns exclusive trademark rights to the Facebook name in the United States and internationally, including related common law rights. Accordingly, Facebook enjoys broad trademark rights in its name.

Facebook has made a substantial investment in developing and providing its services. As a result of Facebook’s pioneering efforts and devoting substantial effort and resources to providing only high quality services, the Facebook name and trademarks are widely known among the consuming public worldwide, and the name and trademarks embody substantial and valuable goodwill.

Accordingly, we were concerned when we learned of your registration and use of face-bookproxy.info. As we hope you can appreciate, protection of its trademarks is very important to Facebook. Your registration and use of face-bookproxy.info violates the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. 1051 et seq.) because it infringes and dilutes the famous Facebook trademark.

Infringement occurs when a third party’s use of a company’s trademark (or a confusingly similar variation thereof) is likely to confuse consumers as to the affiliation, sponsorship or endorsement of the third party’s services. Trademark dilution occurs when a third party’s use of a variation of a company’s trademark is likely to lessen the distinctiveness of the company’s famous trademark.

We have filed several proceedings before the United Nation's World Intellectual Property Organization's arbitration panel. Facebook has prevailed in each case and the domain names at issue were all ordered to be transferred to Facebook. Facebook is concerned that your unauthorized use of the Facebook name may cause confusion as to whether you or your company’s activities are authorized, endorsed or sponsored by Facebook when, in fact, they are not.

We understand that you may have registered face-bookproxy.info without full knowledge of the law in this area. However, Facebook is concerned about your use of the Facebook trademark in your domain name. As you may know, the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act provides for serious penalties (up to $100,000 per domain name) against persons who, without authorization, use, sell, or offer for sale a domain name that infringes another’s trademark.

While Facebook respects your right of expression and your desire to conduct business on the Internet, Facebook must enforce its own rights in order to protect its valuable and famous trademark. For these reasons, and to avoid consumer confusion, Facebook must insist that you immediately stop using face-bookproxy.info and disable any site available at that address. You should not sell, offer to sell, or transfer the domain name to a third party and should let the domain registration expire.

Please confirm in writing that you will agree to resolve this matter as requested. If we do not receive confirmation from you that you will comply with our request, we will have no choice but to pursue all available remedies against you.

Sincerely,

Ethel

Legal Dept.
Facebook, Inc.

But also the mail has landed in spam and with this alert:

Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information. Learn more

 

If I were you, I'd just mark it as Spam:]

 

The mail landed as spam

from
to (Yes, this is you.)
date Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 2:00 AM
subject face-bookproxy.info - Notice of Facebook Trademark Infringement
mailed-by markmonitor.com

 

Mission Accomplished:]

 

Reply and say "NO U"

 

I dont understand, was it a spam? The best way to check is to view the Mail Headers and see the IP. A real email from facebook should contain one of Facebook's IPs. You can view it squirrel mail on your server. Its Unfortunate though Hotmail and some other free emails don't allow viewing of the mail headers. (But they SHOULD there very usefull in these cases)


I think since your domain doesn't offer any service thats related to the Facebook trademark, and the site does not look like Facebook or resemble it any way to confuse users with the Facebook trademark. I think they'd be hard pressed proving your domain is in bad faith.

 

To clear the doubt the mail originally landed in my spam box and not inbox.

As mentioned before this all the details I got off the mail:

from
to (Yes, this is you.) Learn more
date Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 2:00 AM
subject face-bookproxy.info - Notice of Facebook Trademark Infringement
mailed-by markmonitor.com

 

Seems like a spam to me.
In gmail interface when you see the email, you have an option called "show original" which shows complete headers.

 

Search the WIPO decisions and you'll see that Facebook is aggressively going after fan sites: http://www.wipo.int/search/query.html?la=en&col=domain&qt=facebook

MySpace is a lot smarter than this.

 

Was I supposed to search my domain ??

http://www.wipo.int/search/query.html?col=domain&qt=face-bookproxy.info&charset=utf-8

I don't see no results..

Anyways I tried to reply to that email and this is what I got

Delivery has failed to these recipients or distribution lists:


The recipient's e-mail address was not found in the recipient's e-mail system. Microsoft Exchange will not try to redeliver this message for you. Please check the e-mail address and try resending this message, or provide the following diagnostic text to your system administrator.

 

Would anyone use such bad English in a company C&D.

 

Hello,
I never worked under Facebook.com However I have worked with Chris Dewolfe CEO - MySpace.com with Tom Anderson.

In my knowledge your site is fine. You do not have any logos Of facebook.com and you have a "-" between face & book.com.

The oly site that could fight you in any way would be
"http://www.bookproxy.com" However I honestly doubt they will try!

 

Agreed with both the above comments.

But I would definitely want to know the motive of the email. Cos they are not asking to handover the domain neither are asking me to do stuff. Hmm lame scammers I guess

 

No, you search for their Trademark.

 

Facebook would certainly have an argument for trademark infringement, whether or not the email is genuine is unknown. It sound like a standard letter that is sent out all the time. If the email is genuine, they will likely just file a UDRP to take the domain and not sue you. If this happens, you will be notified and given a chance to respond.

If you contact Facebook to check if the email is genuine, and find out it was a fake, you have alerted them to your domain and the infringement. If it was genuine, they are still going to go after the domain regardless of what you say to them.

Keep away from registering domain names with trademarks in them - especially famous ones.

 

You've been asked for the complete headers a couple of times now. Why not provide them?

markmonitor.com is a legit trademark protection company. It may be legit.

 

As theapparatus says, the markmonitor.com site is a real protection company and in my opinion the email is unlikely to be a scam. eBay use the same company to protect their trademark.

They have some sort of automated service which scans and detects domains which are under their protection for infringements and automatically emails the admin, tech or billing contacts listed for that domain name. Unfortunately their tech guys that built the scanning system clearly couldn't figure out how to set a correct reply to email address hence why your response bounced back.

The only reason this email landed in your spam folder is because it is sent from the markmonitor.com domain but has a reply-to address for the facebook.com domain. Spammers often fake headers in this way which is why the email was classified as such.

If I were you I would take the email seriously and if it were me, I would just dump the domain and move on.

As for:

You do not need to be using a trademarked logo to be infringing on a trademark by way of a domain name.

Having a hyphen between "face" and "book" makes no difference, as per the following quote from the WIPO decision when Facebook.com filed against the owner of face-book.com...

 

This is all that is there !!!

from
to (Yes, this is you.) Learn more
date Thu, Jul 23, 2009 at 2:00 AM
subject face-bookproxy.info - Notice of Facebook Trademark Infringement
mailed-by markmonitor.com

 

Surely for a domain that costs less than £1 you would ditch it or set up a fake account with your domain register and push domain to those details??

I would just get rid of it for the sake of a worthless domain name, I work hard to pay my mortgage and feed my family and just wouldnt take the risk

 

It always amazes me how many "experts" come out of the woodwork to tell people to ignore these types of notices. I wonder if they would be willing to pick up your legal costs to defend yourself which, even in an administrative-type action under the UDRP, would be far more than that domain would ever be worth to you.

Pick a new domain and check whether it is a trademark (or at least a famous one). It's free and easy to check, at least for Federal registrations and applications. Simply go to www.uspto.gov