Chicago company sues Facebook over Timeline feature
Chicago-based social-scrapbooking company Timelines.com files trademark-infringement suit against Facebook, claiming that Web giant's new profile feature could put Timelines.com out of business.
Facebook's Timeline, the newest and most dramatic change yet to its famous profile pages, hasn't even rolled out publicly yet, but it's already under legal attack.
Timelines.com, a small Chicago based company, filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit yesterday against Facebook. Timelines.com, an online social-scrapbooking company, has been in business since 2008 and is claiming that Facebook's newest platform product could destroy its livelihood.
According to the complaint, which TechCrunch has embedded, the Chicago startup is seeking damages and an immediate injunction to prevent being "rolled over and quite possibly eliminated by the unlawful action by the world's largest and most powerful social-media company, Facebook."
Facebook's own Timeline offering, introduced just a week ago at the company's F8 developer conference, dramatically amps up basic Facebook profiles by allowing users to tell the story of their lives chronologically with photos, videos, and music, as well as the ability to share content with friends and family, and to comment, read, watch, listen, and buy branded products and services.
Before Timeline, previous posts got lost as newer information appeared. The new Timeline actually makes your entire "life," or what you choose to post about your life on Facebook, scrollable. While Timeline is accessible today via a developer's app on Facebook, the much-anticipated, and presumably easier to use, public version is expected any day now.
Facebook had not responded to a request for comment by publication time.