Sunday, December 20, 2009

Relevance Of Trademarks In The World Wide Web

By Albert Finn

With the widening impact of the internet in our daily lives, the importance of trademarks has gained a new dimension, particularly with respect to domain names. This is vital if you want to successfully promote your product or services among the customers with the help of your domain name.

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

Having a domain name trademarked should always be preceded by detailed research, in order to prevent any possibility of trademark violation. The search must involve a detailed study of marks that are quite similar in spelling, sound or even meaning to the domain name you have chosen for your website. Get your mark registered only after ensuring that it will not give rise to any possible trademark violation claims.

To achieve this, it is always sensible to engage the services of a lawyer, especially a cyber law expert who is aware of all the details of the trademark regulations. This can greatly help in avoiding future disputes related to possible violation.

You must also remember that the domain name you are planning to register should be capable of serving as a quick identifier of your goods and service and should be more than an online address to draw net users to your website.

Besides domain name infringement, there is a new menace of keyword infringement in cyberspace. It basically means infringement of trademarks and their unlawful use as keywords through display of online ads through advertisement services like Yahoo and Google, with the motive of puzzling the consumer.

If the promotional ads help in boosting the sales of the trademark holder, it is not a violation but the problem is created when the advertiser starts making use of such ads for marketing his own goods for a commercial advantage.

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