Corporate trademarks are the logos and words that companies use to identify their goods and services. As buyers, we use brand names to pick the products we want to buy. As manufacturers, we use unique marks to differentiate our goods and services from other companies. Trademarks are deeply incorporated into our culture.
Trademark cases have been argued for many years (long before the World Wide Web), but many trademark holders now believe the Internet has made it more difficult for them to protect their corporate identity. The world is no longer defined by geographic borders; the Internet allows users to be anywhere and everywhere instantly. With brands, logos, and trademarks such a deep part of our on-line culture, it's only natural that they are used in the way we speak or communicate on-line (HTML). Famous trademarks are everywhere, and this makes it extremely difficult for the trademark owners to manage their brand.
Trademark infringement on the Internet:
-Similar or identical domain names have been registered by cyber squatters.
-Many vendors are using their competitor's trademarks in their Meta Tags so that search engines will supply their site with traffic looking for their competitor.
-And some websites have copied trademarked logos and put them on their own websites to imply some authorized connection to the well-known product.
Sometimes trademark use is a clear “infringement” of the mark owner's rights; sometimes they are non-infringing “fair uses.” I discussed what a “fair use” is in an early post.
