It looks as though job listing company Jobs.ie Ltd is sitting on the domain Facebook.ie, which currently redirects users to Irish-based social networking site TalkBeans.com.
If the domain was registered after 2004 it would almost certainly be seen by authorities as being registered in bad faith; apart from this the fact that it is directing traffic to a Facebook-esque site could itself be classed as dishonest usage of a registered brand name.
Facebook’s press office has failed to reply to queries made in relation to this situation and it’s unclear if they’re aware of it or if they plan on taking Jobs.ie Ltd through the IEDR’s “dispute resolution” process to gain control of Facebook.ie.
Considering the fact that there are 28,000 people in the Ireland network on Facebook.com it’s hard to deny that the site is popular amongst Irish people – having some of its potential traffic re-routed to a rival’s site couldn’t be considered good for their business or brand and is unlikely to be something Facebook would or should ignore.
There are plenty of other dot-ie domains being squatted on as we speak such as bebo.ie, nike.ie, police.ie and newspaper.ie. They’re all being held by Gabor Varga and Jozsef Petho and tend to redirect users to websites cluttered with pay-per-click ads.
Varga and Petho are serial domain squatters and only recently lost control of buy-sell.ie to the Buy and Sell company; adidas.ie to Adidas Ireland and gogle.ie, googel.ie, googl.ie and googol.ie to Google Inc.