Intellectual Property in the World of E-Business: Trademarks, Trade Names and Domain Names
Lindsay Tucker
LAW 421
Eric Nord
April 21, 2014
Introduction
The basis of e-business is intellectual property, which holds trademarks, domains, copyrights, patents etc. This article helps understand how trademarks, domains, copyrights, patents, etc. relate to one another and their use in the virtual world including protecting them against issues in cyberspace.
Goods and Services Identification in the Virtual World
Intellectual property resembles brick-and-mortar businesses and in the world of e-business, laws and principles govern IP just as in traditional business. Among all intellectual property, domain names are unique to doing e-business and are functionally different from trademarks (Simensky, Bryer & Wilkof, 1999). Although intellectual property may be globally used in e-business, they are subject to laws the country in which the e-business operates. There are however, some basic global trademark law principles and use of domain names as required by the Internet Corporation for Assig...
When Tim Berners-Lee created the Internet as a non-proprietor, not-for-profit information conduit, he could not have predicted how controversial digitized intellectual property would become. Prior to the Internet, intellectual property was a fairly straightforward issue. It was protected with copyright, trademark, and patent legislations, which granted exclusive rights to owners. Violations were not as abundant because distribution was constrained by time and space. Moreover, violators were identifiable because anonymity was difficult to achieve. In today's "global village" however, digital information such as books, music, software and art can be instantly shared between two anonymous users, without any fee to the creator. Legislation is much more difficult to enforce.
Intellectual property protection has become increasingly popular in the last century. Many factors have probed interest in this area of the law. A few of those factors include musicians seeking protection of their musical talents through use of copyrights, companies seek to protect inventions of advanced production capabilities, companies create trademarks that differentiate their unique goods from competitors, and companies like Coca-Cola protect their undisclosed ingredients for their products through use of trade secrets. These examples are to gain an understanding of how and why intellectual property rights help companies seek advantages in the marketplace. Furthermore, as the world shrinks because of advancements in transportation and computer technology, intellectual property rights become a large part of entrepreneurship and product development. This paper will discuss the interesting and challenging topic of intellectual property protection. The four basic types of intellectual property include copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets; we will discuss the intellectual properties in the order in which they are listed.
The Internet and international business is an interesting topic- discussing an area of business that will probably be around for many years and possibly centuries to come. Since its earliest days, the Internet has been a means of communication, an essential tool in almost instant communication.
About 98.3% of all persons had used e-business services such as Octopus Card and Automatic Teller Machine (Census and Statistics Department, 2009). One of the pitfalls for the development of e-business, however, is the concerns on consumer privacy. According to Green’s (1999) survey, 54% of respondents had decided not to purchase a product because of a concern overuse of personal information collected in the e-business transaction. This essay examines the circumstances on protection of consumer privacy in e-business. As e-business is surging by an astronomical number and consumer information is a kind of property, the protection of consumer privacy in e-business becomes significant.
The future of economic competitiveness for most enterprises relies on entrance and active participation in the e-commerce market. An essential problem with e-commerce is that the controls and organization are different for each site. There is no standard way of building t...
E-commerce means that the company runs their business online, not like the traditional business way. We have to go the shopping mall or store to get goods that we need, E-Business is the enabling of electronic communication between any two or more participants in a business relationship. It helps companies capture abroad business field, cost saving, and market opportunity. E-commerce is an important factor that is making people’s lives more efficient.
The World Intellectual Property Organization, Intellectual property is the ‘products of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, any symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce’. Intellectual Properties such as Patents, designs, trademarks and copyrights are protected by laws .The US government offers different types of protection for these properties. The Lanham Act (15 U.S.C.A. section 1051 et seq) also known as the trademark act of 1946 provides protection for trademarks. A trademark is defined as a name, a word, a symbol, or device or any combination thereof, adopted and used by a manufacturer or merchant to identify his goods and distinguish them from those manufactured and sold by others. (Miaoulis 1978)
The first step is to register a domain name. A domain name is used to identify your unique location on the web. There are a...
E-business and e-commerce are terms that are sometimes used interchangeably, and sometimes they are used to differentiate one vendor’s product from another. In both cases, the e stands for "electronic networks" and describes the application of electronic network technology - including Internet and electronic data interchange (EDI) - to improve and change business processes (Bartels, 2000)
Many advertisers are spending time and money on online technologies. More marketers are advertising on internet and more companies are doing online business as well, so this is increasing the revenue of online media. Newspaper advertisement is declining because internet advertisement is facilitating both the marketers and the consumers. (Evans, David S. 2009)
On one of my first web sites I had an original graphic design, done by one of my friends. The design was interesting and eye-catching, two necessary elements for my site. I kept the design on the site for over six months, before taking it down and rebuilding. Almost a year after the graphic went up on my site, the person who designed it saw it on another site. After he showed me, he expressed his disappointment. He had put his time and hard work into this and someone else had just copied the image off my site and used it for themselves. The design was my friend's work and his intellectual property.
Recently, the Internet has become the most significant technology in all over the world, which is not only used by the people to contact with each other but also utilized by the business organizations to become global (Taylor, Caeti, Loper, Fritsch & Liederbach, 2006). Computer and internet enable the business organizations to execute the Electronic commerce business model, which has become very popular. Computers and Internet are a powerful source in the success of globalization and international business. Computers are being used worldwide and due to this, cyber crimes are increasing continuously with a rapid growth (Cheeseman, 2006).
Li, F 2007, What is E-business ?: how the Internet transforms organizations, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford.
Intellectual property is information, original ideas and expressions of the persons mind that have profitable value and are protected under copyright, patent, service mark, trademark/trade secret regulation from replication, violation, and dilution. Intellectual property includes brand items, formulas, inventions, data, designs and the work of artists. It is one of the most tradable properties in the technology market.
E-commerce application is a platform where there is buying and selling of products and services which are done by businesses and consumers via an electronic medium