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Business Copyright Basics Getting Started with Copyright What Can Be Copyrighted?

so why did facebook copyright their site title?

Hi i heard some time ago that facebook took down an adult site named "thefacebookofsex.com" just because they used name "facebook" for their domain name..... can names of websites be copy-righted?

4 Answers

They did not "copyright" it. The title is probably a trademark and that was seen as a trademark infringement I assume. I suggest you read this - Overview of Trademark Law.

Thanks Gloria! but it does not still make sense to shut down a site just because they used trademark "facebook" in their domain name. thanks for the link!

It does make sense in a way. They can't use that domain name if it was considered a trademark infringement so the solution is closing down the site and have them get another domain if possible. That is better than having to pay millions in fines but I never heard of this incident you are talking of and google doesn't bring up any information on it so it is hard to know the real reasons without reading the news feed it was written at.

yes, seems like the url is redirected to a new dating site(milf.com), I read about this a year ago on a forum site, its ads were really popular once on tube sites, all of a sudden it was offline, ppl said facebook did it.

I see... well we can never know what happened without a solid proof at least they seem to be still functioning in some way. The only reason I can think of that made that happen (if it did happen) is trademark infringement.

thanks for your help!