Social media giant Facebook has applied to have the word ‘Book’ trade marked in Europe, reports reveal.
The European Intellectual Property Office accepted the application and assigned it to an examiner in June.
According to the Telegraph newspaper, the trade mark would apply to any usage of the word ‘Book’ in connection to a range of services, such as virtual reality, wireless charging cases and electronic radio components.
‘Book’, along with the words ‘like’, ‘poke’, ‘wall’, ‘home’ and others have been successfully trade marked by the social media platform in the USA, where the organisation is headquartered.
It is believed the trade mark application has been submitted in an attempt to prevent deviations of the word ‘Facebook’. In the USA, for example, Facebook has successfully sued education website Teachbook and travel website Placebook for breaching its intellectual property.
In its application, the social media platform said it would only apply the trade mark to cases where there is a “genuine chance” that a “reasonable consumer would be confused as to whether a service was connected with Facebook or not”.
Commenting on the Teachbook legal case, the firm said the use of the world ‘Book’ could diminish Facebook’s identity.
“The problem is not merely that they use the word ‘book’. You’ll notice that we have no complaint against Kelly Blue Book or Yellowbook or others. However, there is already a well-known online service with ‘book’ in the brand name that helps people connect and share,” it said.
According to the latest statistics, more than 1.59 billion people use Facebook every day.
Click here to track the status of the application.
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