you have a death wish. it would be best to fire your lawyer and see a shrink.

That's my guess too. Gonna be in the millions.


You've probably basically fucked yourself out of anything even remotely resembling a good financial future.

This. You made it look like facebook, used the word facebook in a slogan on your website and you think you can win from them?

Shouldve settled for it long time ago like i told you on iq69.

Nothing to gain and a shitload to lose. Lot more then just proud on the line.

:(

what did they want originally? the domain, and income so far and legal fees?

don't think you made any money with it at that point, should have just handed it over. sorry but can't see how you'd win in anyway.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded me a Service Mark for a website name that was comprised of two words, one of which is shared by a competitor in the same International Class. Facebook has no more entitledment to the word "face" or "book" than a company like Airgas would over "air" or "gas".

Having said this though, the screenshot above showing the use of the same font and color on the apparrel is possibly a gray area. i would consult an IP attorney on that matter. I've found that law firms that have already been involved in litigations against an entity are willling to offer a lower rate on cases that add fuel to the fire on their pending cases. You might try Howard Rice Nemerovski Canady Falk & Rabkin.

First thing you should do is block wayback machine via htaccess

then hire a lawyer
offer to give them the domain and they will prolly go away.
Not like they need the money

I have blocked it. Made a mistake so the .net wasn't blocked.
I have already spent a ton of lawyers. I have fairly good idea about is going to happen in the time to come.
I'm not gonna give the the domain, or close the site. That's out of the question. I suggested from the start that they could dictate what changes they would want me to do. They weren't interested in any compromise.

you will loose this battle. Never start a fight you cant win!

However, if you were to read the small print, you would find that you have been awarded the use of that name, BUT, there is a two year period in which any other company may lay claim to that name if it can be shown that they were using that name, trademark or icon/logotype etc. Furthermore, if you have the name but do not use it commercially within a 5 year period, the name can be removed from you.
A trademark that is issued in the US or any other country in the world, may be in breach of anothers trademark in another part of the world, and that is why there is a two year `licensing` period. Any name can be trademarked, even if it is a common name such as Air or Gas, if it can be shown that there is deliberate attempt to use the original owners market, style, icon or niche. You cannot trademark Air and not allow use of the word in other markets. Air France for example, there are numerous airlines that use the word Air, but not in combination with France (both common words).


A few years ago McDonlads sued a guy that had a small Cafe in Scotland, for using the name McDonald, they said it was the same name and he was in the same market and was exploiting their marketing.
As McDonald is a rather famous and common name in Scotland, his defence was that it was a family name that dated back a few thousand years, and that the Cafe had operated under that same name for decades, before McDonalds fast food even arrived in Scotland.
He won his case, but he was ordered by the court to remove the large red initial M that had appeared above his Cafe in recent years.

Never used the word facebook in any way.

face50.com don't sue me.

Just curious, do you own dafuckbook.com?

Nope

....

oh was just curious,

i did a search for faceporn.com dns info and i saw this,
Domains using the same Analytics account as faceporn.com: hollywoodshake.com, thatsfucked.org

thatsfucked.org has a link to dafuckbook.com and the link says facebook of sex on the nav.

just trying to be helpful and find anything that they may use against you

plus wasnt it originaly had the same colors as facebook and logo modified?

im sure they screencapped it, it may have changed now, but they profited off their brand for months.

So you're still running your own dating site off that domain and soliciting members?

Then again, you either fold up and sell or redirect the site or change content entirely or give em the domain and beg for forgiveness (best move imo unless like Bob Dylan said, "you got nothing to lose" monitarily or asset wise)

OR you keep competing with them which is prob not the smart thing to do IMO but i do not know your financial condition.

The time to stay out of court is now and doesnt look like you intend to do that having the site up.

You should have buckled when they sent the first c&d and gave them the domain unless you wanted to fight this in court. You hate to lose all your work but..

If you registered your name and dating site before they did then you might have a real good chance. But I am no lawyer.

Good luck.

There is a difference between a dating site and a social network. At least acording to zuckerberg. He argued that the twins were planing a datingsite, and Facebook wasn't that. It's a network to keep in touch with your friends.

Ok real good then you have a better chance. Seems like you are planning to fight this and the q you want to know is if you lose how much can they get?

So maybe I was a little off base in my other post. :)

In answer to that. If you lose they could prob get large judgement.

The good news (sort of) is a bankruptcy will render all judgements null at the time of filing the br. Sooo as long as you dont have much to lose it is worth fighting. If you have lots to lose than that is your choice to make.

So these asset factors are very important. They have prob looked into you and feel you have assets thus the likelyhood of you fileing BR is nill (as you would lose most of your assets)

If you have no assets, they may be bluffing.

If you have no assets you hold the Joker in the game of 500. You have a gauranteed last trick that will protect you.

Being poor.. is a powerful weapon in our society. Being rich.. you got to walk on eggshells.

It doesn't matter if nextri loses, wins or is at a legal standstill for years. Facebook will bury him in legal fees. IMO, his best move is to rebrand his site, inform all his members/visitors about the change and hand the Faceporn domains over to Facebook.

Some good points.
I don't really have any assets they can go after. So when people say I have nothing to gain and everything to loose, I don't really see it that way. I don't think they are suing me to get any money from it. It's more because it's a part of their IP strategy to strengthen their trademark.

I read a really interesting article about it:
http://ipassetmaximizerblog.com/?p=1118

You know you would have never used the word face if it wasn't for facebook. Period. Everyone else knows it as well. You are fucked and getting shitty legal advise to have stayed in an obviously losing and wrong position.

It doesn't matter why i chose the word face. they have trademarked the word facebook, not the word face. And the fact that the word face is such a common word, doesn't make their case better.

How exactly am I fucked? If I don't have any assets, what exactly do I have to loose?

Guess how much the guy they sued who got a $873 million judgment against him ended up paying?

You are missing the obvious point! Good fucking luck you will need it.

certainly not your mind.. that much is clear.

haha. funny..

Not on this side of my monitor it isn't

I think it's a shame to have seen you build up a pretty successful business over the years only to throw it all away because of your own arrogance and greed.

A real damn shame.

serious that script was word for word what he posted on his blog at the time

it shows both prior art use of the term facebook

and knowledge of that prior art

that being said nex should have bought insurance to cover the cost of the legal expense

like lindows.com did

they knew they were going to get sued so they bought insurance to cover the cost of the legal fight

basically the insurance company foot the bill for the case.

however barring that you should definately hire the legal team that one that case.

you have a pretty good arguement to invalidate the trademark completely

which is the reason why microsoft settled the case for 10 million dollars + all legal expenses

Free free free :1orglaugh

Seeing a shrink wouldn't be a bad idea for you either.

He is the most anti-business person there is. I'll bet he even tries to fuck the pizza delivery guy.

.

:1orglaugh AND THEn CRY 'FAIR USE' :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

It doesn't matter if Nextri has a case or not. What matters is that he now has to spend alot of time and money fighting the case. Facebook has an unlimited budget and can "prove" just about anything. Nextri, you might be better of settling with Facebook then fighting them.

Something tells me he burnt any deal-making bridge a long time ago.

Yeah. I kinda did. They weren't interested in making any deal short of a total surrender, and me paying them money.

Hire one of the legal services from GFY or talkers from one of the trade shows. Make it public here on GFY, never know who will help you out.

It will never stand in court dude. Would not worry about it, just get a lawyer to show up. If you get a Lawyer and they see you are defending they will come at you with an offer or simply give up.

Just my 2 cents.

READ YET?
http://phillipsgivenslaw.blogspot.co...trademark.html

A decent attorney can easily defend this.

where are they suing you? in the us?
My understanding of it is that they cannot come after your assets in your home country unless there is some sort of legal treaty between the us and your country. They can only try to obtain your online asstets like domain names, etc...

Good advice:2 cents::thumbsup

Yeah. They are suing in California. And there certainly isn't a treaty between US and Norway for cases like this. Which is part the reason I'm not that worried about loosing. What I am worried about is getting the domain name taken without my consent if I should loose.

If your logic is right, then wouldn't sites like, porntube.com, sextube.com gaytube.com etc.. (+ thousands of others) automatically loose as well if they got threatened by youtube? Please tell me the difference between that, and a porn site using the word face.