Timelines.com sues Facebook
Timelines.com is “the first web site that enables people like you to collaboratively record, discover and share history. It’s history recorded by the people, for the people.” The company is also coincidentally the plaintiff in a new lawsuit they have launched, claiming Facebook’s introduction of “Timelines” threatens their business.
Allegedly unrelated, Facebook has pushed back the launch of the Timelines to the public until October 6, 2011, although the site originally that Timelines would automatically be public on September 29th.
Judge denies company’s requests
Timelines.com has requested a temporary restraining order on Facebook which has been denied by a federal judge as well as a denial of forcing Facebook to disable users from signing on via the Facebook developer program, a hack of sorts that nearly 1.1 million users have already used to get Timelines on their profile early.
Facebook has been ordered to report to the judge every day how many people were enabling the Facebook Timeline through the developer program. Facebook and Timelines.com will go before a different federal judge regarding a potential injunction against Facebook who continues to deny that the lawsuit is related to any delays in releasing Facebook Timelines to the public.
Gary Little
October 4, 2011 at 11:44 am
This is a trademark dispute, not a patent dispute, so Timelines cannot complain about the functionality to be provided by Facebook. This is all about what the *name* of the feature should be.
Interesting that Twitter also has a feature called "Timeline" which they've been using for quite a long time.