Internet law attorney blog
If you’re doing business on the web, chances are you have domain name legal issues that you don’t even know about.
Here’s a related YouTube video that I created for you.
It covers three key domain issues:
1. Registration and trademark infringement.
2. Actual domain name ownership.
3. Registration and hosting.
Second Life is being used with mixed degrees of success for marketing by both big box retailers and small entrepreneurs. In the latter category, is the creator of a “virtual bed.” There’s now an infringement lawsuit based on the bed being stolen. We’re talking about the theft of a “bed” that exists only in a fantasy world.
How does this apply to you? Just a reminder that finding something you like on the Web (such as a photo, banner, or audio), doesn’t mean that you’ve got the legal right to use it simply because you can right-click and save a copy to your hard drive.
Something else to consider. There are now college courses being taught in Second Life, that is, the students are meeting up in the virtual world as part of their classes. If you’re targeting this demographic with your products or services, that’s something to consider.
An Australian consumer protection group has sued Google over alleged deceptive advertising practices. There’s two key parts to this suit that could affect the way you do business.
First, Google has been accused of letting businesses pay for sponsored links that use trademarked words or phrases owned by competitors. Here’s an example of how that would work. Let’s say that I sell MP3 players. If I bought ads on Google to sell my MP3 players and used the keywords “iPod,” “Apple,” and “iTunes,” I’d be misleading people who would be clicking on my ads thinking that they were actually going to see an Apple iPod instead of my MP3 player.
Secondly, the consumer group claims that Google’s search results are deceptive because search engine users can’t really distinguish between organic (unpaid) search engine results and advertisements such as AdWords on the same page.
What are the lessons to take from this?
Black hat or gray hat marketing techniques simply aren’t worth it in the long run when anyone with an axe to grind and hungry trial lawyer is willing to shake you down with a lawsuit or two.
Using a competitor’s trademarked names or phrases to mislead consumers in order to drive traffic to your website isn’t a good idea.
Advertorials and the like are still okay to use in marketing but beware of anything that will allow the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or another government agency to claim that you are misleading the public by claiming to provide objective information that in fact is advertising. “Protecting the public” can cost you.
You and I discussed this back in January when we talked about the FTC’s crackdown on buzz marketing.