This article is more than 1 year old

Facebook sued by Chinese firm over Timeline

Cubic Network got there three years sooner

Chinese web firm Cubic Network is set to sue Facebook for nicking the idea and name behind its Timeline feature, after being prompted to do so by some friendly US lawyers.

The Pinterest-like web start-up was founded four years ago by Harvard graduate Xiong Wanli, according to China Youth Daily (via MIC Gadget).

<pXiong launched the Timeline feature on 9 February 2008, allowing users to display videos and images in chronological order.

Rather suspiciously, Xiong subsequently held a talk at Stanford university about the new functionality attended by a certain M. Zuckerberg, the report said.

Facebook released its own timeline feature, called, er, Timeline, in 2011, three years after Cubic Networks.

Xiong is also complaining that the logo of Facebook’s F8 developer conference is rather too similar to Cubic’s own logo and noted that his company’s R&D centre was called F8 before the social networking giant decided to name its conference.

Cubic Network knew about the potential patent infringement when Facebook’s Timeline was launched but has apparently only now decided on taking action after a sagely bit of advice from some evil money-grabbing friendly US lawyers.

Facebook is of course no stranger to the court room – its very origins were the subject of a bitter legal dispute between the Winklevoss brothers and Zuckerberg, as depicted in feature film The Social Network. ®

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