In our last blog, we outlined how operating digitally online as a means of staying in business during COVID-19 and beyond requires taking a holistic approach to protecting your company’s trademarks and domain names. This approach is often critical to leveraging your online brand, social media platforms and business identity.
Apart from the last blog, here are some additional practical intellectual property (IP) best practices tips:
Always apply to register trademarks and secure domain names before working with new business partners, joint ventures or with licensing brands which may signal your intention to others.
If your domain name is the core of any online brand, having several domain names may be important for safeguarding your brand. However, as cybersquatting is a constant threat to start-up and established brands, you may wish to register some variations of your domain name (e.g. ccTLDs or typo versions). In doing so, consider that the key is to strike a balance as simply having a large portfolio of defensive domain registrations does not eliminate all risks and may not be inexpensive.
Using your own or external resources, create a secure and centralized trademark and domain name registration, renewal, and enforcement process, and ensure all key personnel are aware of this process. To further support your registrations and enforcement, you may wish to pay to “watch” or monitor your trademarks and domain names to be alerted to possible infringing activities against your brand by others.
When it comes to your social media use, always consider copyright ownership issues. In particular, do consider whether your use of social media content such as videos, music and photos are an unauthorized use. In terms of liability risk, when promoting your products and services, you should seek to avoid damage claims such as by third party copyright holders, such as stock photo companies or performance rights organizations in Canada.
Finally, when embedding a photo, music or video in a post, blog on your website (whether or not it is linked to third-party social medial), always first consider if you are legally entitled to use or embed copyrighted photos, music or videos without first obtaining permission or a license from the copyright holder. On the flipside, a copyright owner should consider the Copyright Act, RSC ‘Notice and Notice Regime’ which would allow you to notify an intermediary (e.g. a social media platform) that they are hosting copyright infringing content.
Should you require any assistance, please contact us to schedule an initial telephone call.