Facebook vs Climbook

Climbook is a community dedicated to climbing that has been helping since 2009 via its website thousands of climbers to orient themselves by offering free reviews for climbing; who decides to undertake a climb reads the reviews and understands the degree of difficulty. Every day on average, one hundred users access and write their reviews. In this way the climibing routes are increased and the site is constantly updated automatically thanks to everyone's contribution. Today, the community has mapped over 70 thousand routes worldwide, mostly in Europe and with a significant weight in Italy. Climbook is the brainchild of Alessandro Lamberti, a mountain guide and climbing instructor who refers to Climbook as a public service, without advertising, and not a social network, there is no need to register. The problems arise in 2015 when Facebook decided to take legal action to remove the name of Climbook. Through his lawyers FB sent a letter asking the small community to leave the Internet domain too similar to the colossus founded by Mark Zuckerberg and because there was a risk of confusion for users. In all, Climbook initiated a procedure to contest the opposition to the registration of the trademark (which had been registered a few years earlier) emphasizing that the risk of confondibility does not exist since the fundamental part of the mark is the word "climb", not "book". A few days ago came the decision of the Italian Italian Patent and Trademark Office, UIBM, that rejected the opposition of Facebook and confirmed the difference between the marks and that the average user is wiser then expected. Paradoxically Lamberti has received a lot of solidarity, especially on Facebook.


02/26/2018 | General - Info