Facebook is suing a company called Teachbook, which operates a social networking site for teachers, apparently because it has "book" in its name and "competes" with Facebook. Teachbook is described as "a professional community for teachers".

In the suit, Facebook is alleging federal trademark dilution, trademark infringement and unfair competition.

Teachbook, which says that it is a community for teachers where users can share lesson plans, get advice, and connect with other educators, had created a site similar in scope to Facebook, but rather than social, Teachbook is offering a professional network site for educators. The homepage had a message, that has since been removed, stating, "Many schools forbid their teachers to maintain Facebook and MySpace accounts ... With Teachbook, you can manage your profile."

For Facebook, which has grown possessive of the "book" suffix, this isn't the first legal suit that the company has brought up. It had pursued PlaceBook before, forcing that company to change its travel site to TripTrace. Facebook seems to be following in Apple's footsteps; Apple had been known for some time to go after sites and companies that use "pod" as a suffix in an attempt to protect its iPod trademark.

Facebook drops the following stats in its case for why others shouldn't be able to use the word "book" in their names:

    - Facebook has over 500 million active users

    - Those users spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook.com.

    - Facebook is the second most trafficked site in the U.S.

    - Over 150 million Facebook users also engage with FB through third-party sites each month

    - Over a million sites have implemented tools Facebook makes available

    - Through Facebook, users can interact with over 900 million objects (individual and community pages, groups, and events) and 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.).

"Through this usage, Facebook has permeated the web and Facebook users are accustomed to seeing and expect to see Facebook across the world wide web, not just on the Facebook site," the suit proclaims. "Facebook, and its FACEBOOK trademark, are famous."

The suit also mentions that Facebook owns a number of U.S. registrations for the mark FACEBOOK, covering a variety of goods and services, such as online networking services, chat functions, electronic media, online journals with user-defined content and electronic publishing services, and software to enable uploading, tagging, and sharing of electronic media or info.

By this logic, other companies that use either "Face" or "Book" may have to fear. It's unclear what the company's stance on the word "the" is, as Facebook was first called "The Facebook". "The" is only slightly more common than "book", especially in the teaching profession, I would imagine. Since "the" is no longer part of the Facbook brand, I'm guessing they won't pursue that.

It's also worth noting that Facebook just launched a product called "Facebook Places" , even though Google (their direct competitor) already had a product called "Google Places".

So no more librarybook? mybook, yourbook? for forum names and social groups? How can Facebook complain on others for using a common word such as “book” in their name, even if it is the case with a social network? Do you think that is right?