It's amusing that Facebook alleged that "timeline" was a generic word, while at the same time have fought vigorously to control their "poke" and "like" terms.

I think you are comparing apples and oranges. IMHO Timelines.com is suing over a feature/function not a term. I would think a lawsuit would be filed even if FB called it something else.

Marshall

Tell the judge:

U.S. District Judge John Darrah disagreed, noting Facebook itself has battled hard in the courts to protect words it's trademarked, including "poke" and "like."

:)

The major difference to me of course is timelines.com hosts some stuff that (should) matter, and timeline of Facebook, oh well &> /dev/null

Hasn't Facebook been suing over other people's use of the word "face"?

It all seems rather ridiculous but at least FB gets a taste of its own medicine.

Timelines to me just looks like a very very poor relation to Wikipedia but ranked in date order.

I spent 2 minutes there, got bored and left.

Intellectual property is out of control. Pretty soon you won't be able to post to webmasterworld without getting sued for every word you use.

We sure do live in interesting times...and lines...

The problem Facebook is always going to have is that courts are run by humans. And any judge is going to know Facebook's history. (i.e. the founders are now all billionaires off a stock sell that was "allegedly" fraudulent/misleading)

Also all the privacy issues they don't care about, the behind-the-curtain approach to customer support and their own legal issues (e.g. that the whole original Facebook code bit was "allegedly" stolen from Zucker's university).

Facebook walk into court every time with a big KICK ME sign stapled to their face.