Facebook Wins Against Timelines' Request For Preliminary Injunction On Facebook

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Just a few days ago, we brought you word about Timelines, the small Chicago company that was looking to sue Facebook over the unauthorized use of the trademarked name in Facebook’s newest feature shown off at the f8 show, Timeline. And there’s been a bit of a setback for the small company as it seems not only is Facebook ready to go to court over this, they’re also getting a bit of a win in advance.

US District Court judges denied the request for a preliminary injunction against Facebook, but included a request that both companies bring their lawyers to court tomorrow (pretty much guaranteeing their news will be largely swallowed up by the fact that Apple is putting on its big Let’s Talk iPhone show tomorrow) to argue their respective cases. Interestingly, Facebook has agreed to not launch the Timeline feature for the time being, instead providing daily updates as to how many people have signed up to get in on this themselves.

Interestingly, Timelines’ Facebook page now seems to be back up and operational, though there appears to be a lag in updates from June 15th to October 1st.

Timelines’ case revolves around two critical points: one, Timelines’ service–which allows users to create timelines of events, from world history to personal history and things that probably shouldn’t even be covered in the concept of history like the history of internet memes–is very similar to that of Facebook’s Timeline service, and two, Timelines has actually owned the trademark to Timelines since 2009.

I’m of two minds on this one–the concept of a timeline has been around for some time, so this is almost like trying to trademark the letter E, at least from my totally-not-a-lawyer outsider’s view. But at the same time, we’ve seen how some major names have botched the trademark concept of late, especially when Netflix found out just who owned the word Qwikster on Twitter. It’s not out of line to suggest that Facebook made the same kind of mistake as Netflix.

It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes, though–and where do you think it will go? Think that Timelines is about to get a serious windfall? Or will they get laughed out of court by much bigger lawyers and a whole lot more operating capital? Either way, the comments section waits for you below!