Social media giant Facebook has gained the upper-hand, as of now, in its face-off with Chicago-based company, Timelines.com. Late last week, US Federal Judge Edmond Chang refused to grant a temporary restraining order (TRO) to the smaller company, which had filed a suit claiming that Facebook’s new timeline feature may ‘eliminate’ it. This indicates that Facebook will not have to delay its Timeline launch unless the court finds the social networking giant guilty of a trademark violation.
In its complaint, Timelines.com sought damages and a TRO which would block Facebook’s Timeline feature from rolling out during the time it takes for the case to go to trial. Sam Lessin, product manager at Facebook, promised that Facebook would not launch Timeline between the time of his testimony and Tuesday, when representatives from Facebook and Timelines.com will meet again in front of another federal judge to debate whether an injunction should be issued against Facebook.
Timelines.com claims in the lawsuit filed in Chicago that the social network’s Timeline feature ‘infringes on Timelines’ federally registered trademarks in that it causes confusion as to the source of the services offered to users of the Internet. “Facebook’s Timeline offering and its misdirection of users attempting to access Timelines’ offering is intended to prevent Internet users from accessing information about Timelines.com and 
to allow users to instead use Facebook’s Timeline offering.
However, the judge had a concession for Timelines.com in that he said that the company could try again to stop the Timeline feature launch. The judge also revealed that Facebook’s new service already has 1.1 million graph developers and that between 100,000 and 200,000 are signing up every day. He refused Timelines.com’s request to force Facebook to stop enrolling new developers, but did instruct Facebook to make daily disclosures about how many developers are signing up.
Timelines.com also alleged that Facebook was redirecting users from the Timelines.com Facebook Page at facebook.com/timelines to Facebook’s own Timeline webpage. Since, the Palo Alto based company has stopped doing this, Chang stated that emergency relief was not required.
In May 2008, Timeline.com filed for a trademark for the word ‘timeline’ and was granted the same in January 2009. The Trademark law states that brands can prevent others from using their names if there is a likelihood that consumers will be confused where the names are in the same field or industry. Facebook on the other hand is arguing that the word ‘timeline’ is generic.
Given Facebook’s magnitude and reach, it is likely that the company will enter into a settlement with the smaller company or may be buy it outright.
Facebook’s Timeline feature has not been free of controversies, especially, when it came to light that it would allow users to see which of their friends and acquaintances have ‘de-friended’ them on the network.
The Timeline feature is akin to an online scrapbook displaying photos and text that users have shared on Facebook over the years. The timeline can go back to include years before Facebook existed, so users can add pictures and events from the time when they were born.
It remains to be seen whether this lawsuit is going to delay the launch of the Facebook Timeline feature. Without committing to any particular date, a Facebook spokesman insisted that the feature would be released in the coming weeks.