Back in May, we mentioned that Facebook had filed a suit with the World Intellectual Property Organization against the owner of Facebook.me in an attempt to get the name. The company wanted the name particularly because the phrase “will you facebook me?” has become synonymous with “will you friend me?” with both phrases referring to Facebook’s popular “friending’ features.
As predicted, the case was fairly open and shut as the current owner, Amjad Abbas, had the domain pointing to Facebook and apparently also listed the domain name on a for sale site with a minimum sale price of $2000. Interestingly, he paid $5,115 for the domain name during the.me landrush period.
From the World Intellectual Property Organization’s panelist summary:
“The Respondent went on to advise the Registrar that he had bought several .me domain names, and had other .com and .net domain names which he had held for more than six years. The reason the Respondent offered to the Registrar for holding these domain names was that he enjoyed collecting domain names, especially unique ones – he achieved “joy and satisfaction with my ‘IT/Internet’ friends here”.
The Respondent told the Registrar in his May 6, 2010 email that he paid around USD6,000 to win an auction for the Domain Name, and that during the auction process he was checking almost every 10 minutes on his mobile phone over a period of more than five days until he was confirmed as the highest bidder. As for his future intentions for the Domain Name, the Respondent told the Registrar the he would not sell it or transfer it or forward it to an improper site, or otherwise use it in bad faith. The Respondent told the Registrar that one of his ideas was to point the Domain Name to his personal Facebook page after he had completed that page, so that he would have “the most unique personal Facebook page URL in the world!! … hence I communicate to all my friends that my Facebook page is ‘www.FaceBook.me’!! They will not believe it, until they try it. Wow, that would be great.”
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