&#62; judges routinely order the accusing party in nuisance lawsuits to pay the defendant's costs.<p>That's not so 'routinely' as you think, and these costs are not equal to the actual costs billed by the defendants lawyers.<p>I wished it was, then I could recover a 100K or so from various idiots that sued us over the years.<p>&#62; especially since they are quite likely to get it back,<p>They really likely would not. The judge might even rule against them for a variety of technical reasons.<p>Going to court is much like going to the casino, only for much higher stakes.<p>&#62; By caving they are in effect setting their own precedent that trademark holders can demand and will receive arbitrary URLs on their private web site. You would think that this outcome would be so bad for them that they'd gladly pay practically any amount to avoid it.<p>Yes, that's what you would think. But the fact that they don't should make you wonder if you aren't missing something.<p>They're evil, but they're definitely not stupid. I really do not think that this case behind the scenes is as simple as what it looks like on the outside.<p>Trademark law is tricky and the outcome of such a case is by no means certain. I'm fairly sure that facebook made that provision in their terms of service <i>exactly</i> for cases like this, because standing up for the 'rights' of their users over what is essentially a string of bits on a server is not in the interest of their bottom line.<p>Only a very small fraction of their users will ever run in to this problem, and only a very small fraction of those will have sympathy on their side.<p>&#62;  I would expect it is an internal policy,<p>Agreed, in fact it is a published policy.<p>&#62; probably combined in this case with money and/or advertising commits changing hands.<p>If there ever is any proof of that then I think the sentiment will change drastically, for now - and I stress that that could change any moment - it does not look as though 'harman' has been assigned to any other party.