Internet Brand Protection

Please note the Law may have changed since the publication of article.

In an ever more competitive and cynical world, it is vital that you protect and maximise the benefit of the investment that you have made in your brand. If you don’t, others will certainly take advantage through predatory advertisements, paying for Google Adwords or similar services to use your brand names to draw potential customers to their websites rather than yours.

We advise many companies on how best to protect their brands in the internet space. There are various issues involved on which we can advise. We can do this by way of providing a report on existing or potential threats to your internet presence or dealing with particular problems that arise.

The main categories are as follows:-

  1. Preventative Domain Name Registrations

    2. We look into any gaps in your domain name registrations which should be filled to pre-empt such names being registered by an unscrupulous competitor or other third party looking to trade off your goodwill or hold you to ransom.

  2. Abusive Domain Name Registrations

    3. We research registrations of domain names by third parties that appear to trade off your goodwill by using your registered trademarks or other trading names/product names and advise as to what action should be taken in respect of each of these.

  3. Search Engine Sponsored Associations

    4. We can trawl Google and other main search engines to see which companies/competitors appear to be paying the search engine companies for “Adwords” or similar services so as to appear in the results/rankings that appear when someone searches for one of your trademarks (registered or unregistered) and advise as to what action can be taken.

  4. Search Engine Rankings Based on Metatags or Similar

    5. We can trawl the search engines for websites which are listed in the search engine rankings/results that appear when someone searches for one of your trading names or brand names. We can then look at the websites in question to determine whether they have used any underhand methods to achieve such rankings ” and advise as to what action can be taken.

  5. Competitors’ Websites

    6. We can also review the websites of your specific competitors to see if they are doing anything underhand which prejudices you and, if so, advise as to what action should be taken.

If you want to discuss any of these or related issues, please contact Simon Halberstam

Links to relevant information:

  • Article “Domain Name Disputes – 7 Key Issues”