The Internet has brought about numerous new trademark issues.
The commercial value of trademarks can easily be diluted
in cyberspace. It is for this reason that expert advice
should be gained to identify culprits and to take legal
action.
Commercial value of domain names
Trademarks are frequently registered as part of domain
names. It is an extremely important branding tool, with
a lot of commercial value. Website owners, hoping to attract
more visitors for a specific product, may easily incorporate
the brand name of another company into their domain in the
hope to gain higher visitor rates. This is a black hat optimisation
method frowned upon by competitors. It can cost your company
millions in revenue as users are mislead into thinking that
the domain is associated with your brand.
Meta Tags
Not so easy to identify, but still very damaging, is the
phenomenon where website owners can include a trademark
from your company, in the invisible part of their site,
to attract search engines and in turn to get a good ranking.
It is illegal for a website to include, for example, the
name of a magazine as part of their Meta tags to get traffic
to a site about the topic. You may very well be guilty of
this practice without even realizing it.
Be on the right side of the law and protect the commercial
value of your brand name in cyberspace. Get expert advice
and help in litigating the matter.
Contact Smit & Van Wyk Intellectual Property Attorneys
in South Africa via their website.
