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eMarketing Challenges Trademark Owners, & Marketing Experts to Learn Cyber Theft Tactics
© Cheryl Hodgson 2009 | Posted on April 22, 2009
I just returned from San Francisco where I was privileged to address legal issues confronting trademark and copyright owners, marketing professionals and brand experts in the digital space. http://www.emarketingassociation.com/2009/SF/. A big thanks to Robert Fleming for having me with such a distinguished group!
The audience was varied, and the speakers outstanding. There was a lot of Twitter chatter happening as we spoke. I’ll be reviewing some of their presentations in the next few weeks. Meanwhile, from the initial feedback, I believe my message that intellectual property, including trademarks, are valuable business assets worthy of protection and risk management was well received. There is a new entourage accompanying brands in E Marketing, including the professionals such as me, those I met, and most important, the consumers who follow and support the brands they love.
Even some professionals do not fully grasp the difference between a domain name registration and a trademark. My address included examples of descriptive domain names which are difficult to protect as trademarks, and real life examples of the pitfalls of failing to secure trademark registrations for domain names that qualify. Those of us who participated in the Social Media panel following my address fielded a number of questions relating to privacy, and how social media can be used to generate business.
While preparing for the conference, new issues began emerging for several clients which gave me even more to consider.. Suddenly one client contacted me about a new Twitter ID which contained it trademark accompanied by the word “affiliate” as in Internet Marketing Affiliate. My client launched a successful affiliate marketing program two years ago, but the person on Twitter was not one of them. I received a few frantic emails asking for help. There is also the issue of making certain even authorized marketing affiliates are not registering domains with your trademarks in them. Now there’s a topic to discuss, controlling domain names by distributors world wide!
In the next few posts, I’ll zero in on the some of the more interesting issues confronting trademark owners in Internet marketing, including such issues as typosquatting, Cyberssquatting, and pay per click ad monetaized by domain registrars.
The BRANDAIDE, Brandito Watch Internet Enforcement Manual launched as an e-book this week, and will help general counsel, marketing professionals and trademark owners learn more about these issues. It’s vital to learn how to police your brands on the Internet, to prevent loss of rights and develop an online trademark and intellectual property strategy. The informative introduction and table of contents is available for free by clicking on this link. http://www.brand-aide.com
Technorati Tags: brand equity, brand management, brand protection, Branding, Copyright, intangible assets, Intellectual Property, internet law, Marketing, trademark, trademark registration, Trademarks
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