Trademark infringement on the Internet and the World Wide Web is rampant. There is such a complete explosion of trademark infringement on the internet as a result of the registration of domain names, or the use of trademarks on web pages in order to divert customers from the rightful trademark owner into a competing site or a scam site or a site that has ads up on it.
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Trademark infringement on the Internet and the World Wide Web is rampant. There is such a complete explosion of trademark infringement on the internet as a result of the registration of domain names, or the use of trademarks on web pages in order to divert customers from the rightful trademark owner into a competing site or a scam site or a site that has ads up on it.
My name is Trademark Infringement Attorney Enrico Schaefer, and today we're going to be talk a little bit about the problem of trademark infringement on the Internet. Because it is so easy to put up a web page, because it is so easy to register a domain name, because it is so easy to upload content to third-party websites, it is really easy to infringe trademarks. So if you have a trademark and hopefully it's registered with the USPTO, and you've protected your name, slogan, or logo in a way which gives you the leverage you're going to need in order to potentially send a trademark infringement cease and desist letter at some point down the line.
Hopefully, you've done those things. But, even if you've done those things, the next issue you're going to face is, if you are a company with a famous name or brand; or even if you are a business that has a less than famous name or brand that's trademark protected, which is attacked by a competitor or an angry customer, the next thing that you're going to see is that trademark infringement can happen to you, and it can really hurt your business. It can deflect your customers from coming to your website, hiring you, or buying your goods and services.
So if you're a famous brand, you're going to find that trademark infringement is almost absolutely going to be an institutional part of your business process. You're going to have to deal with the fact that other people are trying to use your name or brand in a way which infringes your trademark. And if that's the case, you've got to put together a comprehensive strategy, which not only identifies who's infringing your trademarks by the registration of domain names that are typographically or phonetically similar, who is using your trademark on Amazon.com, Buy.com, and some of these other e-commerce retail portals? Who is using your trademark on web pages in order to pretend that they are you or that you've endorsed them in some way? And what you will find is that there are lots of problems out there, lots of fires to be put out.
How do you now deal with the plethora of issues that you're facing in an online world? It's all about prioritizing and identifying the problems and trying to attack them in a way that provides return on investment. Now, I always tell clients who ask, and any good trademark infringement lawyer will tell you, that your trademark has value as intellectual property, also known as IP. So your IP or your intangible assets, which includes all the things that you can't touch or see or feel. They may involve your trade secrets. They may involve your confidential information. It could be your contract rights. It certainly will be your trademarks and your copyrights. It could be all of your goodwill associated with your business name or brand. These are the types of things that comprise your IP.
If you protect your trademark by monitoring for infringement and putting a program in order to deal with folks who are infringing your trademark, you'll be able to provide that file of information to anyone who wants to value your business down the line, let it be a bank or a potential investor or someone that wants to buy your company. You need to be able to show them that not only do you have a lot of good will, but you've protected the brand and the name by registration of the trademark and protection of the trademark in commerce. You can double the value of your business as a result of these types of activities. So it always makes sense to have a program because you are going to get value out of that. But you don't have to put out every fire in the world. You don't have to stop every person who is infringing your trademark. You do have to be able to show a concerted effort to identify and deal with problems of trademark infringement on the Internet.
Now, when it comes to the World Wide Web, there are lots of tools that you can use into order to identify potential trademark issues, such as Google alerts where you set up a Google alert for your trademark or brand name in order to get back information about every place on the web where your brand name or trademark are being used. That can provide you an awful lot of information, sometimes too much information. A good lawyer will understand how to use these software tools in order to call the information, in order to understand which items are truly problems and which items are truly not problems.
There are also various systems that will tell you when domain names become available that are similar to your brand or when someone has registered a domain name which is similar to your trademark. You want to be in control of that and understand where people are trying to siphon off your traffic. There's something called direct navigation, where a consumer actually goes to the browser bar of your web browser and types your URL or web address in directly. And on a percentage basis, they will sometimes mistype your trademark, brand, name by accident because of poor typing skills or otherwise, and they'll come up to some other site because that other site, if someone has registered a domain name for that typo and is putting up ads which compete directly against your business on that web page, it's called a parking page.
So a good trademark attorney, who understands Internet law and the World Wide Web, will be able to with the monitoring aspect of your activities. That trademark lawyer will also be able to help you understand which ones are costing you the most money, which ones are generating the most traffic, which ones are the most direct attack on your trademark and, therefore, be able to make good, solid legal recommendations. Which ones should receive notice letters, which ones should receive threat letters, which ones need to have a lawsuit filed against them for trademark infringement. So these are the types of things that you want to be thinking about. Again, you don't have to deal with every single problem that arises and you're going to have to make intelligent business decisions about trademark protection on the Internet. My name is, Trademark Lawyer, Enrico Schaefer. I hope you learned something today, and we'll see you next time.
You have been listening to Trademark Law Radio. Whether you are facing a trademark infringement, licensing, monitoring or trademark registration issue, we have a trademark attorney ready to answer your questions
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