Whether the defendants being international companies that are proprietors of a trademark, Facebook, registered under the laws of Nigeria, under Trademark Act Cap T13 LFN can seek to render nugatory and abrogate another registered trademark, registered under Nigerian law, through self help and without recourse and in complete disdain for the provisions of Section 6 and 36 (1) CFRN 1999 (as amended) and Section 20, 21, 39, and 54 of the Trademark Act.
Whether Facebook are lawfully entitled to harass, intimidate or coerce the plaintiff and its business name, to abandon its registered trademark, having regard to the provisions of Section 49 of the Trademark Act among others.
The Plaintiff also prayed the court for an order of perpetual injunction restraining Facebook, its agents, privies, assigns, successors in title and legal representatives from taking further unlawful steps to harass, intimidate or interfere with its right to use the registered trademark; Pawsbook. Com & Device.
The Plaintiff demanded for the sum of $10million as general damages and another $1 Million for exemplary damages.
In the plaintiff’s statement of fact, the firm averred that it opened a Facebook account for its business sometime in April 2012 and had been using same for publicity, marketing and reaching out to its clients all around the world and had an unblemished relationship with the defendants until sometime in 2014 when its applied for the registration of its Pawsbook trademark, which the defendants felt was an infringement of their own ‘Facebook’ trademark.
The company further averred that Facebook through its solicitors wrote it many time, informing it that they would block its business accounts and all integration offered to its if it didn’t stop using or change his trademark name.
Knowing that the removal and/or blockage of the Plaintiff’s Facebook integration would affect the its business, the defendant blocked the plaintiff’s business accounts on the facebook platform until its agreed to change the name of its registered trademark or stopped using it entirely.
Facebook was defended by the duo of White and Case, an international law firm and Jackson Etti & Edu, a leading intellectual property law firm in Nigeria.
In Defence to the Suit, the defendants alleged that the plaintiff’s account was blocked as a result of several contractual breaches, which contravened the Statement of Rights and Responsibility (SRR) entered by the parties at the time of opening the Facebook Accounts.
The defendants further alleged that the court had no Jurisdiction by virtue of a Jurisdiction clause in the SRR, which stipulated that the venue of resolving disputes would be the district Court of California. The defendants also argued that the Trademark certificate given to the defendant was invalid.
But the plaintiff’s counsel, Gideon Okebu, urged the court to jettison the defence of Facebook, as an afterthought.
Okebu referred the court to several documents which emanated from Facebook prior to litigation, which clearly showed that the reason for blocking the plaintiff’s business integration was not for any contractual breach but as a means of coercing the plaintiff to abandon his registered trademark.
The lawyer further urged the court to discountenance the submission that the court lacked jurisdiction, while emphasizing that the plaintiff’s cause of action did not stem from contract but from a trademark dispute.
He referred to legal authorities affirming the position of the law that Jurisdiction is conferred by the claims of a Plaintiff.
