Facebook appears to be getting much more aggressive in protecting its brand, even going as far as attempting to trademark the word “face,” documents indicate. The company took over another application for the common word from UK company CIS Internet Limited.
Their application was filed in 2005 by that company, and TechCrunch’s Erick Shonfeld suspects CIS transferred the application to FaceBook around November 2008. Around this time the social networking site’s lawyers began to deal with the US Patent and Trademark Office over the application.
All is not smooth sailing — Facebook is getting opposition to the attempt from a familiar face. Aaron Greenspan was a classmate of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and last year successfully settled with the social networking company over his claims to being part of Facebook’s initial development.