Recently, a well-known food firm launched its latest brand on
national TV. The firm secured high profile national coverage and
executives were pleased, writes Antony Gold.
Unfortunately, the next morning when the employee responsible for
the company's Web site contacted Nominet, the organisation that
operates UK domain name registrations, to register the new brand as
a domain name, it had already been done. It soon came to light that
a viewer had registered the domain name in a blatant case of
"cybersquatting".
The company did eventually win back rights to the domain name, but
the case proves that while the Web brings unprecedented benefits to
your brand or trade mark, it also houses an army of "brand
assassins" with global power.
For about as long as the Web has been around, cybersquatting and
linking have been common problems for Web experts. To a large
extent legislation now supports companies that feel their domain
names have been hijacked.
It is difficult to estimate how many firms are affected but in the
past two years, under the Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy
more than 5,000 decisions have been made relating to
cybersquatting. If nothing else this proves that companies are
prepared to fight for a domain name that they feel should be
theirs. More recently we have seen new suffixes come on to the
market, such as .info and .biz, and companies have had to go
through the whole registering process again.
In today's market, intellectual property and brands are big
business and their value often represents a sizeable asset on the
balance sheet.
When the Web first emerged as a powerful tool to market to
consumers, little or no regard was given to protecting intangible
assets such as brands or intellectual property. Surprisingly, many
firms are resigned to the fact that they may never have complete
control over their intellectual property or brands, but this need
not be the case.
A brand is much bigger than a single trade mark or slogan but in
the wrong hands the damage that can be done to a company's
reputation if the brand or trade mark is abused can wreak havoc to
its bottom line.
Linking is less of a problem than if someone piggybacks on your
intellectual property by taking a domain name which you should
have, or hijacks a company slogan or strapline - these are far more
difficult to police.
Many of the issues associated with brand abuse come back to
reputation management. In traditional marketplaces companies go out
of their way to protect their reputations, register their trade
marks and logos and patent their intellectual property. But put
them in the online arena and many of them forget the basic
principles of reputation management.
It is not difficult to identify instances where another company may
be using your company name online - a relatively straightforward
search should reveal this. But infringement of intellectual
property or trade mark abuse will need a more sophisticated system
and some sort of guidance on legal redress.
To help eliminate abuse it should be acknowledged at a senior level
that provisions need to be made to help fight the online brand
war.
How to reduce online brand abuse
- Be ready when new suffixes are due. Many companies were caught
out and did not register .biz and .info domain names before they
were bought by 'cybersquatters'
- Register the domain names of new product/brand launches as soon
as they are decided
- Avoid leaking the name of new brands and products before you
are ready to officially launch
- Never launch a new product/brand before you have registered the
domain names
- Employ a reliable monitoring service that can give you a
complete global picture about your brand online and supply
intelligent information about how you can resolve problems
- Consider registering all trade marks and domain names, slogans,
phrases and strap lines
- Set up a formal legal procedure for addressing brand
abuse.
Antony Gold is a partner at law firm Eversheds