The case involved Chicago-based Timelines.com, which lets users to create interactive “timelines” based on historical events. Back in October of 2011, they sued Facebook for trademark infringement just weeks after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the new Timeline profile page at the company’s f8 conference. Soon after, Facebook countersued, saying that the word “timeline” was generic and did not deserve trademark protection. The trial was supposed to have begun on April 22nd, but was delayed at the last minute.

Here’s the pertinent bit from the filing:

We are also party to various legal proceedings and claims which arise in the ordinary course of business. Among these legal matters, in two cases, Summit 6 LLC v. Research in Motion Corporation et al. , and Timelines, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc., we have reached agreements to settle the matters. The cost of settlement in each case, which is included in the accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2013, was not material to our business, financial condition, or results of operations.

Facebook adds that they expect no adverse effect from the settlements:

Although the results of these other lawsuits, claims, government investigations, and proceedings in which we are involved cannot be predicted with certainty, we do not believe that the final outcome of these other matters will have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition, or results of operations.

That’s all we have right now. I’ve reached out to Facebook for additional info and will update this article accordingly.

[Form 10-Q via Inside Facebook]

The website, Timelines.com, lets users create and edit “timelines” of historical events. They sued Facebook back in October of 2011, just weeks after Facebook announced their new Timeline product at the company’s f8 conference. As of now, all Facebook users have the new Timeline, which is an update of the traditional Facebook profile page.

Timelines.com claimed that Facebook was infringing upon their trademarks by operating the new profile under the name “Timeline.” Facebook quickly countersued, claiming that the term “timeline” is generic – too generic in fact to deserve any sort of federal trademark protections. They have argued that the trademarks should be canceled.

“Given the generic or at least merely descriptive nature of the term ‘timeline’ when used to identify chronologies of events and related information (or tools for their creation), as well as the prior and widespread use of the term by third parties, Counterdefendant does not own exclusive rights in the term ‘timelines’ as used in connection with timeline creation and collection services,” says Facebook.

Earlier this year, Facebook asked U.S. District Judge John W. Darrah to dismiss the original suit. And a few weeks ago, Darrah ruled that the claim must go to trial. He said that Facebook had ““failed to demonstrate, as a matter of law, that the marks are generic.”

He also concluded that with “millions of dollars invested in its business and more than a thousand active users,” it’s reasonable to believe that the word “timeline” has its own specific meaning to Timelines.com users.

Timelines.com has just shy of 100,000 visitors a month, while Facebook boats over 1 billion monthly active users. The trial began this morning in the Northern District Court of Illinois.

Facebook launched their new Timeline design, a one-column format with more focus on interests, in early March. The main Timeline page got a facelift, streamlining stories and moving other information and activities to the left-hand side. More relevant to this story, the About section also got retooled. Each interest now has its own section, and you can also add custom apps like Instagram or Foursquare activity if you so choose.

Facebook is still in the process of rolling out the new Timeline.

Anyway, Facebook tells Inside Facebook that the new Groups section on your Timeline will only show the “open” groups that you belong to. Both closed and secret groups should be hidden from the new panel, something that should please those concerned with privacy in light of Facebook’s problems with Groups visibility.

Groups will join individual boxes for your friends, photos, music, movies, Tv shows, books, games, likes, and app activity on the About section on your Timeline. Facebook just unveiled the new Games section a couple of weeks ago.

“Common action and object types such as ‘video.watches’ and ‘music.listens’ no longer require configuration within Open Graph tools,” explains Facebook’s Caroline Schafer, in a post on the company’s developer blog. “To start publishing common actions, simply select the SDK that you use and paste in the sample code that we provide for each action type.”

Documentation for this is available here.

Facebook has also made it easier for developers to create custom actions and object types, enabling them to preview the stories that their apps can publish to the News Feed. Once a story’s configuration is finalized, developers can hit “Get Code” in the Open Graph dashboard, and past it into the app to publish the action with logged in users.

Documentation for this is here.

“In addition to News Feed stories, users can now add your app’s content to dedicated collections on their timeline and About page,” says Schafer. “For example, a recipe app can include collections such as ‘Recently Cooked Recipes’ or ‘Top Recipes.’ Collections can also have different layouts, such as lists, map, and gallery below.”

Documentation for this is here.

Developers must submit their app’s News Feed stories and timeline collections for approval, so Facebook can make sure they’re up to snuff with their quality guidelines. The review status can be seen in the Review Status section of the dashboard. Developers will also receive alerts when submissions are made, approved or returned for changes.

Back in October of 2011, fresh off of unveiling the new Timeline profiles at the f8 conference, Facebook was sued by Timelines.com – a site that lets users create chronological historical records. The site, which launched in 2009, claimed that Facebook was infringing on their trademark with their new “Timeline” feature.

A few months later, Facebook countersued. They claimed that the term “timeline” is generic, citing the fact that a Google search of the term yields nearly 200 million results.

“Given the generic or at least merely descriptive nature of the term ‘timeline’ when used to identify chronologies of events and related information (or tools for their creation), as well as the prior and widespread use of the term by third parties, Counterdefendant does not own exclusive rights in the term ‘timelines’ as used in connection with timeline creation and collection services,” said Facebook.

Now, a Judge has ruled that the trial must go on, saying that Facebook has “failed to demonstrate, as a matter of law, that the marks are generic.”

He claims that Timelines.com has “millions of dollars invested in its business and more than a thousand active users,” and that it’s reasonable to believe that “timelines” has its own specific meaning to Timelines.com users.

A couple of months ago, Facebook updated investors on the situation, saying:

“We believe the claims made by the Timelines plaintiffs are without merit, and we intend to continue to defend ourselves vigorously. Although the outcome of litigation is inherently uncertain, we do not believe the possibility of loss…is probable.”

The trial is set to kick off April 22nd.

[Above image is Timelines.com's Facebook Timeline]

Facebook announced that it will begin rolling out the new Games section to timeline and users’ About pages. The section will only appear for those who have played one or more social games in the past 30 days, or those who have liked at least one game on Facebook.

It should be noted that the Games section contains the same privacy controls as other sections on timeline. A user can mark a game’s app privacy to “close friends” and only those designated as such will be able to see the game on their timeline.

If you want your game to be a little more special, developers can use Open Graph to create a stand-alone app section for their game. Players can then place the game in its own section of timeline for all to see. You can learn more about that here.

As for the weekly bug report, Facebook says that 33 bugs were fixed while 60 were assigned for further review. You can check out the full bug fix list at the blog post.

For the past few months, Facebook has been testing a one-column Timeline layout that puts all your posts in one, larger column and everything else like music, photos, recent activity, and other Open Graph actions on the other side.

Today, Facebook is beginning to roll this new Timeline out to all users.

The new layout puts all of your post on the right-hand side in a single, streamlined column. Everything else, like friends, photos, and more now rest in the smaller, left-hand column:

Your About page is also getting a facelift, with more focus given to your interest (music, movies, books, TV, etc.) and the apps that deal with them. Each interest gets its own section, for instance “Movies” allows you to easily add films you’ve watched, films you “want to watch” and films you “like.”

You can either manually add movies to this list or you can let apps like Netflix (which just opened up Facebook integration today) or Flixster do the legwork.

You can also add custom apps to your Timeline to express what you’re most interested in, for example Instagram.

“To simplify how apps are displayed on timeline, we’re replacing aggregations with app sections. Previously, only top-ranked Open Graph stories and aggregations would appear on timeline. Now, when someone adds an app section, it will appear in the same place until they edit the order or visibility,” says Facebook.

If you want to add a specific app to your Timeline, all you have to do is click the “add to profile” button on you app section page.

Facebook says that they will roll out these changes over the coming weeks, so be patient.

Facebook’s Annual Report filing with the SEC revealed that the case, Timelines, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc., will go to trial on April 22nd of this year. In 2011, Timelines Inc., owners of Timelines.com, sued Facebook over the “Timeline” name. At that point, Facebook was just coming off of the f8 conference and beginning to roll out the new profile to more and more users.

A couple of months after Timelines, Inc filed suit, Facebook countersued. Facebook’s argument all along is that the term “timeline” is generic. In their filing, Facebook listed dozens of instances of “timeline” being used in a generic capacity in the past, and made the point that a Google search of “timeline” yields over 196 million results.

Timelines.com allows users to record and share historical events.

“Given the generic or at least merely descriptive nature of the term ‘timeline’ when used to identify chronologies of events and related information (or tools for their creation), as well as the prior and widespread use of the term by third parties, Counterdefendant does not own exclusive rights in the term ‘timelines’ as used in connection with timeline creation and collection services,” claims Facebook.

In their Annual Report, Facebook tells investors that they don’t see defeat as very probable in this case:

In the Timelines case, the plaintiffs allege that Facebook infringes a trademark held by the plaintiffs…We believe the claims made by the Timelines plaintiffs are without merit, and we intend to continue to defend ourselves vigorously. Although the outcome of litigation is inherently uncertain, we do not believe the possibility of loss…is probable. We are unable to estimate a range of loss, if any, that could result were there to be an adverse final decision, and we have not accrued a liability for either matter.

“If an unfavorable outcome were to occur in the…Timelines case, it is possible that the impact could be material to our results of operations in the period(s) in which any such outcome becomes probable and estimable,” says the company.

[via Chicago Tribune]

Facebook has been pretty busy testing new Timeline designs as of late. A new, streamlined one-column Timeline made an appearance for some Facebook users back in October 2012.

And earlier this month, that test rolled out to users in New Zealand, Facebook’s favorite testing ground for new products and features.

Today’s new Timeline test is very similar to the aforementioned test, except that it’s been flipped.

Like the other Timeline test floating around, the column that contains user posts has been expanded. It’s streamlined and single-column, meaning that ‘message’ style posts will only appear in one column. And Open Graph actions, friends, and other information is the only thing that will appear in the other column.

The image tiles at the top that allow users to access your photos, friends, likes, and map have been replaced by tabs for “Timeline,” “About,” “Friends,” “Photos,” and “More.”

Profile pics have also been moved out of the cover photo a bit. The stuff that was previously below the profile pic (location, job, etc.) has been moved to the right.

BUT IT’S FLIPPED!

Posts on the right, Open Graph activity on the left. It’s a bizarro Facebook Timeline.

[Inside Facebook]

The Next Web is reporting on the Timeline redesign, and they say that it has rolled out across New Zealand. Facebook routinely tests new features and products in New Zealand before bringing them to the rest of the world.

The new profile appearing in New Zealand appears to be the same new profile test that we saw back in October, when it was spotted in only a fraction of users.

The redesigned Timeline isn’t a drastic change from what you currently see, but it is a pretty significant one. Upon first look you’ll notice that the image tiles at the top that allow users to access your photos, friends, likes, and map are gone. They’ve been replaced by tabs for “Timeline,” “About,” “Friends,” “Photos,” and “More.”

Users’ profile pics have also been moved down, out of the cover photo a bit. The info that was previously below the profile pic (location, job, etc.) has been moved to the right.

But the most noticeable difference in this new Timeline test comes when you scroll down. You’ll notice an expanded left-hand column, where status updates and friend posts appear. As we mentioned back in October, this test also streamlines these posts, displaying them in the left-hand column entirely. “Message” style posts will no longer fill in the right-hand column after a users’ open graph and other activity runs out.

We’ll update you on this test, and whether or not it graduates from New Zealand. Facebook has had this one in the works for over two months now, so we’ll take a guess and say that all users should see this new Timeline fairly soon.