Saturday, August 21, 2010

Significance Of Trademark In Cyberspace

By Alex Finn

Any discussion on the requirement of trademark laws in cyberspace invariably leads to the necessity of trademarks for domain names. This is quite crucial in light of the fact that your domain name conveys your identity and also highlights your services to the consumers.

A domain name that is protected by trademark not only helps you to sue persons infringing your mark and making use of it as their personal mark but also protects you from being perceived as the owner of their website that might be making use of an exact or deceptively similar domain name as yours.

However, you should undertake a search on the database of domain names to see if your proposed mark is violating any of the already existing ones. The search must include a close study of marks that are quite similar in spelling, sound or even meaning to the domain name you have chosen for your website. You should file an application for registration only after you are certain that your trademark is distinct enough to avoid any possible violation.

For this objective, it is advisable to take help of a lawyer, preferably a cyber law specialist, who also has a comprehensive knowledge of trademark laws. This can go a long way in preventing future conflicts related to possible infringement.

You must take into consideration the fact that the domain name that you want to trademark must be more than an ordinary web address to draw users to your site. It must be an identity that differentiates your services from others.

Other than domain names and their possible violation, keyword infringement is a new problem in cyberspace, wherein original trademarks are lifted and used as keywords in ads put up through Yahoo, Google, and MSN, with the obvious purpose of creating a misunderstanding and confusing among the customers.

If the promotional ads help in boosting the sales of the trademark owner, it is not a violation but the problem arises when the infringer starts using such ads for promoting his own product for a commercial advantage.

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