Timelines Inc., a small venture capital-backed Chicago company that operates the Timelines.com website, has launched a trademark-infringement suit against Facebook on Thursday, claiming that the latter’s recently announced Timeline feature could “quite possibly eliminate” its entire business.

Timelines.com is a website that basically allows people to record and share personal or historic events, and contribute descriptions, links, photos and videos related to those events, people, companies, bands and whatnot (i.e. Cuban Missile Crisis, Al Capone and Pink Floyd).

The suit essentially claims that Facebook’s Timeline service (see their blog post announcing the feature) has the potential to put Timelines Inc. straight out of Compton business.

From the complaint (also embedded below):

This matter seeks to protect Timelines, a small company headquartered in Chicago, that has been in business for almost five years, from being rolled over and quite possibly eliminated by the unlawful action by the world’s largest and most powerful social media company, Facebook.

Facebook has announced its intention to use and, indeed has already begun to re-direct Internet traffic, using Timelines’ federally registered “TIMELINES” trademark as the centerpiece of Facebook’s new product offering going forward, a move that, given the size and reach of Facebook, will essentially eliminate Timelines and leave the public with the confusing impression that plaintiff Timelines is somehow affiliated with Facebook.

In the event that Facebook is permitted to move forward with release of its “Timeline” product offering, consumer confusion with Timelines’ existing “Timelines” website will invariably result.

The suit also claims that Facebook hijacked the URL Facebook.com/timelines, which used to lead to Timelines’ Facebook page (and is, ironically, still linked to at the top of the Timelines.com website):

Facebook’s “Timeline” offering and its misdirection of users attempting to access Timelines’ offering is intended to prevent Internet users from accessing information about Timelines.com and to allow users to instead use Facebook’s “Timeline” offering.

Timelines is the owner of the registered trademarks “Timelines” (U.S. Reg. No. 3,684,074), “Timelines.com” (U.S. Reg. No. 3,764,134), and “Timelines & design” (U.S. Reg. No. 3,784,720).

We’ve reached out to Facebook for a response to Timelines’ allegations.

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TIMELINES
FACEBOOK






Company:
Timelines


Website:
timelines.com


Funding:
$3M



Timelines, Inc. provides services that enable people and entities to discover, record and share history using the web. The company’s platform is uniquely built to chronicle events (using descriptions, photos, videos, and locations contributed by multiple users), and then enables people to relate these events to each other based on time, place or topic.

Timelines offers three services:

Timelines.com, for individuals and entities that want to reach and interact with a broad audience about publicly shared events;
Timelines...






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Company:
Facebook


Website:
facebook.com


Launch Date:
January 2, 2004


Funding:
$2.34B



Facebook is the world’s largest social network, with over 500 million users.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in February 2004, initially as an exclusive network for Harvard students. It was a huge hit: in 2 weeks, half of the schools in the Boston area began demanding a Facebook network. Zuckerberg immediately recruited his friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes to help build Facebook, and within four months, Facebook added 30 more college networks.

The original idea for the term...






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