SUMMARY: Think that you missed your opportunity to register your company’s trademark or trade name as a username on Facebook? Learned that someone else has registered your company’s trademark or trade name as a Facebook username?

Facebook’s Personalized Username Policy

At 3 p.m. EDT on June 9, 2009, Facebook publicly announced a new policy that allowed existing users to create custom usernames (such as facebook.com/[companyname]). In order to prevent what it called “name squatting,” Facebook allowed owners of registered trademarks that had a live Facebook page prior the public announcement to reserve their trademarks as usernames. As of 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 13, 2009, all Facebook users (including non-trademark owners) with registered pages prior to the June 9th public announcement were eligible to register personalized Facebook URLs on a first-come, first-served basis. Those usernames that were reserved by brand owners, however, were removed from the pool of eligible usernames. Verified users who created Facebook pages after the June 9th cutoff became eligible to create personalized (or branded) Facebook usernames as of June 28, 2009 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. Today, custom usernames can be registered at www.facebook.com/username. If your company took advantage of Facebook’s advanced reservation process for trademark owners, you may register the trademark as a username here.

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