Trademarks and Cyberlaw - Essay Example

The paper "Trademarks and Cyberlaw" is a great example of an essay on business. In the recent past, disputes in domain names have considerably increased due to the presence of almost similar domain names. Notably, a number of issues my surround domain name disputes including concurrent rights, name dilution, and cyber-squatting. Since domain names have high value to an organization's trade capacity, domain name disputes are often treated as serious issues. 

A good example of a domain dispute is Google case against two investors Elliot and Gillepsie after they purchased over 763 domain names that had Google in them such as googledisney.com. Later, the two investors filed a lawsuit to invalidate Google a trademark in their domain names. Their argument that overuse of the word Google had led to domain dilution as the public perceived the name as a verb (Craig, 2013). When Google appeared in court, they defended this argument stating that Google was still a trademark and that the majority of the public perceived it as so. The company presented research that showed the popularity of Google as a valid trademark with 93% of public opinion. The company also criticized the two entrepreneurs who had previously used the trademarks to direct traffic to the pornographic site which amounted to an abuse of the trademark. The judge ruled in favor of Google stating that it was unfair to strip a company of its trademark due to its popularity within the public. This is an example of many disputes that have become popular as companies fight over domain names.
As a manager who intends to launch a new mobile product in the market, I possess a duty to evaluate the possible disputes that arise in the development of a trademark. The intention of the company is to develop a mobile application that allows mobile users to compute tax using their mobiles. The proposed mobile name application is mobitax application. Trademark electronic search system provides new investors with an opportunity to verify their trademarks before registering them as a strategy to avoid any conflict in the future. To do this, one requires to login into the TESS website and key in their domain name. Secondly, it is crucial to check for synonyms or misspellings that may be a source of conflict. While searching on the TESS website, I found potential causes of conflict. Notably, there are many applications that have their applications start with the term “mobi” such as mobit, mobivu, and mobiapp. On this note, there is a likelihood of a company suing for similarity as we launch the new trademark. When such a domain name dispute arises, it is possible that a judge would require the new provider to change their domain name (Craig, 2013). However, since the trademark uniquely describes the purpose of the application, it would be unlikely to have a dispute for the above name. Besides, the trademark electronic search system does not have a synonym for this trademark it would be unnecessary to change this domain name. In conclusion, trademark is a valuable organization resource as it presents the image of the company and offers value to organization products. Recently, disputes have arisen due to negligence and the existence of malicious companies that intend to compete unfairly in the market. On this note, it is crucial that any company that intend to launch new products conduct a trademark survey in the trademark electronic search system before deciding on the domain name. This is crucial to avoid any conflict that may arise in case of similarity or even misspellings. The consequences of domain disputes should be avoided to protect the organizational image. Read More