Facebook shuts down artist’s plan to issue mock “identity cards”

In response to Torbias Leingruber’s Facebook Identity cards, Facebook planned to shut down his project due to trademark infringement, however Leingruber claimed that all of the information used on the cards was accessible to the public from people’s online profiles. Liengruber felt that although his project was shut down, it was a success.

However, Leingruber managed to continue his projects by changing the name from Facebook Id, to the more generic ‘social network’, the Social Id Cards using the same layout, colour and fonts, Facebook used Leingruber still managed to continue his project. Offering a limited number of Facebook users these Id cards. This makes me question whether or not the project would have had as much publicity if it wasn’t already criticised for its infringement issues? Similar aspects of appropriation of format have been used within our logo’s.

Alongside this another artist Moritz Tolxdorff, worked with a very similar concept making Google + Id cards, however Google haven’t responded in lawsuit. These are available at : https://plus.google.com/+MoritzTolxdorff/posts/8opAZGV5GVJ

 

Bibliography:

Leingruber, T. 2013. Social ID Bureau // Get your Social Identity Card NOW!. [online] Available at: http://socialidbureau.com/ [Accessed: 6 Dec 2013].

Plus.google.com. 2013. Moritz Tolxdorff – Google+ – Create your own +Google+ ID cardI posted it earlier today…. [online] Available at: https://plus.google.com/+MoritzTolxdorff/posts/8opAZGV5GVJ [Accessed: 6 Dec 2013].

Protalinski, E. and Protalinski, E. 2012. Get your own Facebook, Google+ ID card | ZDNet. [online] Available at: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/facebook/get-your-own-facebook-google-id-card/9671 [Accessed: 6 Dec 2013].

The Daily Dot. 2012. Facebook shuts down artist’s plan to issue mock. [online] Available at: http://www.dailydot.com/news/fbbureau-facebook-identity-cards/ [Accessed: 6 Dec 2013].