The use of new media becomes ever more important in attracting and engaging customers. Social networks can be used to raise awareness, recruit brand ambassadors, issue highly targeted advertising, provide instant PR and seek immediate feedback. With its instantaneous and global reach the web offers great opportunities but also exposure to competitors, critics and potential infringers seeking to take advantage of or attack your brand. Abuses can hit your bottom line, dilute your brand, and impact on your goodwill and consumer trust.Typical misuses include: Registering domain names incorporating your trademark; Using the trademark as meta-data within a site to improve the site’s position in the so-called organic or natural search engine results; Online auction/retail using your trademark as a genetic description for a category of goods and services; Setting up fake profiles or denigrating brands in social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter.
Here are 6 top tips on how to protect your brand online 1) Be ready and ensure that your house is in order: this includes registering your main brands/names as trademarks in your main markets, registering domain names, including your brand (and common misspellings), but also potentially Facebook and Twitter profiles, a YouTube channel and an “About Me” page on eBay. 2) When it will be appropriate to make use of online facilitators’ own policies and procedures: Join programmes, such as eBay’s VERO. 3) Develop a strategy for dealing with infringements and other abuses and keep it under review. What are the key threats for your brand and the services you offer? What infringements will you prioritise? When will you walk away? (for budgetary or PR reasons). 4) Monitor the use of your brand online. 5) In social media if you detect use of your trademark by your competitors on Facebook and similar sites, then you may wish to make use of the operators’ own take-down/IP complaints procedures. Facebook provides an automated IP non-copyright complaint form at http://www.facebook.com/legal/copyright.php?noncopy-right_notice=1 You will need to be confident that the offending use of your trademark does infringe and in Europe this of course means that your mark is being used “in the course of trade”.Individual users’ references to your trademark, however, are unlikely to be “use in the course of trade” and are therefore unlikely to infringe. 6) In domain names, use of your trademark in a website domain name may amount to trademark infringement, which can be pursued in the courts. Often, however, a cheaper and more efficient enforcement alternative is to make use of the domain name dispute resolution procedures, available through ICANN (the UDRP) in respect of .com disputes or through the national equivalent, in respect of country level domain names, for example Nominet for .uk domain names.Your complaint will usually be only being successful if the domain name holder’s domain name is: - Identical or confusingly similar to your trademark or service mark;
- The domain name holder has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
- The domain name holder’s domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.
All articles are for general purposes and guidance only and do not constitute legal or professional advice. Copyright 2010 Anassutzi & Co Limited. All rights reserved. Information may be shared or reproduced only if accompanied by the author’s name and bio.
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