Can They Do That? Policing Your Intellectual Property on the Internet

(Mondaq – Lisa Martz, McCarthy Tétrault)

As more and more commerce is conducted online, it has become increasingly important to monitor the Internet for activities that infringe a company’s intellectually property rights. In fact, the ease with which electronic material can be copied, coupled with an attitude of indifference amongst many online operators regarding the legality of their activities, makes the Internet a zone that is particularly ripe for infringement.

Once a brand is recognized to have value, it is inevitable that unauthorized third parties will do what they can to make money from it on the Internet. By now, most companies have registered for themselves an Internet address (referred to as a “URL” or domain name”) that has as its dominant or only element their key brand or trade-mark (e.g., http://mccarthy.ca ), and are using this address to post a website that promotes their business. However, brand owners need to be aware that the more successful their online presence, the more likely it is that someone is seeking to trade on the Internet traffic looking for the brand owner’s site.

Cyber-squatting is the term used to describe the registration of a domain name that incorporates the trade-mark of another. Although many Internet users rely on search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) to locate a website, studies show that a significant number of Internet users look for a website by way of “direct navigation,” i.e., by guessing at the Internet address and typing it into their web browser. Where a brand allows for multiple logical formulations of a website address (e.g., www.mccarthy.ca, www.mccarthys.ca, or www.mccarthytetrault.ca), the potential for exploitation by unauthorized parties abounds. The typos that inevitably occur when Internet users attempt to type a brand name into their browser (e.g., www.mcarthy.ca) provide another opportunity for brand exploitation (sometimes referred to as “typo-squatting”).

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