By Steve Levy
Does your company have a website and social media posts? Of course, it does. Do you own the copyrights in that content? Of course, you do (or you certainly should through work-for-hire agreements with independent contractors). These assets can be of immense value when going after online copycats, scams, and even cybersquatting of your company’s trademarks.
Most online abuses (websites, social media accounts, etc.) try to impersonate a company and confuse the public into thinking that the site or content originates with a known brand owner. Though not always, it very often happens that these include images of a company’s logo, pictures of its products, promotional or “About Us” text, photos of its senior executives, or other material that’s been copied from the company’s legitimate media. Most of this content is subject to both U.S. and international copyright laws and treaties which means that the company has the ability to enforce its rights against the content.
The quickest and simplest line of attack is use of a takedown notice sent to the provider that is hosting the abuse. Under the U.S. Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), other international laws, and the abuse policies of many hosting provers and social media sites, the owner of copyrighted material can submit an abuse notice and request that the offending content be taken down. Of course, this is far from a perfect system as the responsiveness of different hosts and platforms varies greatly, multiple follow-up requests may be needed, and the offender may simply move to a different host or account name. However, the low cost of this approach is often well worth the attempt to avoid other more costly enforcement approaches like a UDRP complaint or court litigation.
If the takedown option doesn’t get the job done, consideration should be given to filing a formal domain name complaint under the UDRP or other applicable policy. This can only be done if the company’s trademark appears in a disputed domain name, but copyrights can still play a role in this arena. One of the items that UDRP panels have looked at when deciding whether a domain name was registered and is in bad faith, under paragraph 4(a)(iii), is whether the use of the domain, for a website or phishing emails, uses the complainant’s copyrighted material. Such activity can help cement the case that the domain name owner knew of and intentionally targeted a company’s trademark rather than was unaware of the mark or used the domain name in a generic or descriptive manner.
So, the next time you come across a cybersquatted domain name, a copycat social media account, or even just an impersonation website using a completely unrelated domain name, consider how your copyright assets can play a role in getting that material shut down.