This is Brian Hall, an internet lawyer with Traverse Legal, PLC, a law firm that represents companies who operate websites and have internet businesses throughout the United States. Today, I will be providing tips for those looking to set up and protect a website.  

As an internet lawyer, I represent several companies related to their creation of a website, and even more companies relating to their ongoing use and protection of a website.  There are tips that I give to my clients all the time and I think it’s beneficial to pass those along to you.

The first tip that I always tell someone is name is important.  And what I mean by that is there are two things that really pertain to a website that deal with a name.  The first is the domain name.  The second is the actual service mark or trademark associated with the particular website.  More often than not, they’re the same.  However, sometimes it’s very difficult to get a domain name that matches a service mark and therefore there might be some variation in the domain name as it relates to the service mark.

Regardless, the best place to start if you have not yet set up your website is with a trademark availability assessment, sometimes known as a trademark clearance.  This will allow an attorney to perform a search to make sure that the name you’re looking to use for website is actually clear and available and will not subject you to claims of trademark infringement.

In the event that it is clear and available, you should use a trademark attorney to actually file a trademark application with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), which will hopefully lead to a trademark registration.  That will give you protections and super benefits that those that do not have a registration would be entitled to.

So, once again, the first tip that I can give is focus on the name and do what’s necessary to protect it.  In the event that you can get a registered mark, go for it.  And make sure that you not only get the domain name that corresponds to your mark if available, but also variations of it, such as misspellings and typosquats, that will ultimately save you time and money in the future if others would try and cybersquat on your particular domain names.

Once you have the name, the next thing that you can do is obtain protection for what the content is on your website.  So whereas the name is protected via a trademark or service mark, the content on your website, such as the graphics or the text itself or maybe even certain functionality, may be protected by using a copyright.  While common law copyright provides some protection, which is why you see all the websites out there today having language at the bottom that says “copyright” with a certain date and the name of the company, and possibility even language such as “all rights reserved”, by filing a copyright application with the U.S. Copyright Office, you will gain, again, additional benefits that will provide you with not only leverage in the event of copyright infringement, but also entitlement to specific damages that are statutory under the law.  A copyright attorney can help you identify what those particular items are that may be subject to copyright protection.

Now, it’s important to also recognize at this point that you want to make sure that you are, indeed, the owner of the copyright; and this tip is extremely important.  It is, more often than not, that a website owner isn’t the one that actually created everything on the website.  They go out and they find a web designer.  They go out and they use a web host.  They go out and they might find search engine optimizers.  Whatever it might be, these third parties are typically independent contractors that perform work on behalf of the website owner.  However, it’s critical that the website owner get written agreements with these independent contractors that provide the website owner with rights to the final work product.  Copyright law has specific provisions known as work-for-hire that require that these be in writing in order to have the copyright ownership be with the website owner as opposed to the author or creator of the particular item or matter on the website.  In the event you do not know whether or not something qualifies as work-for-hire under copyright law, it’s advisable to have language within your independent contractor agreement that assigns all of that matter to the website owner.  These independent contractor agreements cannot be understated.  They sometimes make the difference between you being able to claim complete ownership, and you being able to resolve a dispute between a web designer or somebody else who may be holding your website or part of it ransom in hopes of obtaining additional money from you for particular services.  So, do not overlook the importance of having agreements in writing with those who that help you create your website.

Assuming that you have protected your website via a trademark or service mark and copyright, and you’ve done all you can to secure ownership, the next thing you can do is have necessary website agreements displayed on your website.  And these can include several things. The first would be terms of use or terms of service that essentially governs the relationship between you and internet users.  It sets forth what the purpose is of your website and sets forth important legal provisions that dictate and govern various aspects of your website.

Another potential website agreement is a privacy policy, which sets forth how you may collect and use certain information.  A copyright policy and even an advertising policy are ones that are also advisable.  Within these various website agreements, you can include important disclaimer information and limitations on liability that you otherwise would not be entitled to without such agreements.  An internet lawyer can help you draft these and make them specific to your website.  While I often hear from clients that they can simply go out and use a search engine to find various website agreements, I always say the same thing in response.  You do not want to rely upon terms that may not be applicable to your website or may not entirely cover all aspects of your website with the agreements that will ultimately be the most important document between you and an internet user that is trying to sue you or you are trying to sue.  So, be smart and speak with an internet attorney who can provide you with the necessary website agreements for your website.

And finally, make sure that your website is owned not only by you, but in particular, hopefully an entity that you are a part of.  This provides you with benefits not only from a tax standpoint, but also from a personal liability standpoint, be it a limited liability company, an LLC, or some type of corporation, it’s better to have the entity own and operate the website, rather than you individually, if you can get to a point where financing is not as difficult to acquire and a budget isn’t something that you’re so ingrained  and sticking to, that you are unable to actually provide yourself with those necessary corporate formalities.

So, these have been a list of tips that I hope will help you in developing your new website or in continuing to use your website.  It’s never too late to get these things if you already have a website up and running.  And, in fact, you’d be well served making sure that you are doing things properly within the legalities that are set forth by various laws in the United States and elsewhere, and also, in order to ensure that your consumers and those internet users that come to your website are getting the necessary education and information they need from agreements or other statements on your website.

So, once again, this has been Brian Hall offering his tips as to the best ways to protect a new or existing website.

You’ve been listening to Internet Law Radio.  Whether you are facing a domain name, intellectual property or a complex litigation issue, we have an Internet law attorney ready to answer your questions.

Welcome to Internet Law Radio.  My name is Attorney Enrico Schaefer.  I specialize in internet law, including website agreement drafting, privacy policies, terms of service, terms of use and other web related contracts.  Today, we’re going to be talking about website privacy policy drafting tips.

Every website should have a privacy policy.  In fact, the law requires you to have a website privacy policy.  In many states, there are statutes which govern privacy policy standards and requirements.  So, everyone who launches a website who’s going to be accepting information from a user needs to be extremely careful about making sure their privacy policy is drafted in a way which is going to be matched to whatever types of information they’re going to be gathering.  Now, what kind of information might a website gather?  Well, if you have a piece of software which is getting web statistics, traffic statistics, then a cookie is being placed every time someone loads up that web page, and information is being collected.  So, the message here is that even behind the scenes sometimes your website’s collecting information and you might not even know it.  It’s important for you to have a privacy policy.

Obviously, there are many websites that do actively collect information.  For instance, email addresses of users or registration information from users or e-commerce information from users – credit card information – and the like, and you need to be able to tell your users how, when and under what circumstances you’re going to use that information.  A privacy policy for your website is going to govern that contractual relationship with the visitors to your website, okay?  So, what kinds of things need to go into a privacy policy and what are the drafting tips that a privacy policy drafting attorney would provide to you if you were to hire them to draft or review your website privacy policy?  Let’s go through some examples and it’ll start to make a little bit more sense.

The first thing that you need to discuss with your website visitor is what information you are going to collect. Your privacy policy should tell the user what kind of information is being collected from them from your website.  It might be as a result of filling out a form.  It might be as simply as loading the web page, okay?  If registration is required, obviously that’s a higher level of information being collected.  So, the first thing your attorney should be doing is doing an audit of the types of information that are being collected by your website, so that you can have a list and provide that information to the end-user.

The next thing that you’re going to have to tell website visitors about your privacy policy is what you are going to do with the information that you collect.  So, the second privacy policy drafting tip that this attorney is going to give you is that you need to be able to not only tell the end-user –the website visitor – what you’re collected, in terms of information, but how are you going to use that information.  So, for instance, are you going to provide their email address to related or unrelated third parties?  That’s a big issue on the internet.  We all know that what Facebook faces day in and day out every time they add a feature and the privacy mavens out there take a hard look at that and they determine whether  or not it appears that there is an intrusion into people’s privacy.  Your privacy policy in not only going to advise consumers, but it’s going to protect you when someone alleges that you’ve violated their privacy rights, and you’re going to refer them back to your privacy policy from your website and you’re going to say, “Hey, we disclosed what we collected and we told you how we were going to use that information.”

Now, here is a privacy policy drafting tip number three.  A lot of people have privacy policies for their website which fail to account for all the different information they’re collecting or fail to advise people as to how they’re going to use that information and, in fact, the privacy policy becomes a weapon of the consumer against the website owner, so that’s why this is so critical.  It’s very important that you get it right.  A good website privacy policy attorney will know how to keep you in the fairway so that your own privacy policy doesn’t become a weapon against you, okay?

The next thing that you need to know – the next privacy policy drafting tip -, as it were, is you need to tell consumers how you’re going to protect the information that you’re collecting from them.  Do you use cookies?  Are there any third party links on your website?  If there is a third party link on the website, how is that going to be incorporated into your privacy policy?  Are you responsible for the direction that you send people to?  So, if you are a traffic cop and you send a car down a side street, are you responsible for what happens on that side street.  Now, there are also a number of other things that you need to be thinking about when you have your attorney or lawyer draft your privacy policy or review your existing privacy policy for an upgrade.  You need to get consent from the user that they agree to the privacy policy (by using our site, you have consented to our privacy policy).  You also need to be able to leave yourself open to change the privacy policy as you go, so that it’s not a static privacy policy, in fact, it is subject to your change.  Then you need to also provide people information as to how to contact you.  These are some of the basics that apply when you’re going to put a privacy policy on your website.

This is Privacy Policy Attorney Enrico Schaefer, providing you my best initial tips to drafting a privacy policy and incorporating it into your website.  Feel free to contact us at anytime.  We’d be more than willing to tell you how we can help you make sure that your website privacy policy is up to snuff.  We’ll see you next time.

You’ve been listening to Internet Law Radio.  Whether you are facing a domain name, intellectual property or a complex litigation issue, we have an Internet law attorney ready to answer your questions.

Welcome to Internet Law Radio.  My name is Attorney Enrico Schaefer.  I specialize in Internet law issues.  I am an Internet law attorney.  One of the most common questions that we get is what is an Internet lawyer?  Is it someone who practices law on the Internet?  The answer to that question is no.  While we use technology in order to improve customer service for our clients, the main point of being an Internet lawyer is that it involves specialization in online legal issues; legal issues that arise on the World Wide Web.  So, that can translate into lots of different things.

Let’s talk about trademark infringement.  Trademark infringement on the Internet is rampant.  When infringement occurs online, there are different considerations that a lawyer has to think about in order to adequately protect the trademark owner’s interests.  For instance, is there a way that you can deal with the web hosting company, website owner, back-end DNS or terms of service that might give you the ability to deal with that trademark infringement issue, in addition to simply sending a trademark infringement threat letter to the person who may have inappropriately used the trademark or service mark.

Let’s talk about copyright infringement.  When copyright infringement occurs online, there are a whole series of statutes that apply that are completely different than when copyright infringement occurs in a brick & mortar world.  An Internet lawyer understands how these statutes such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) apply, and how they will affect a copyright holder’s rights and potentially remedies in order to deal with the person who’s infringing the copyright.  Sometimes you could do a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice to the website owner or the website host, and have the infringing material removed from the web.

Let’s talk about anonymous activity on the Internet.  When someone posts something anonymously or does something anonymously on the Internet, one of the most common problems is identifying whom it is that you are supposed to be sending a threat letter to or filing a lawsuit against.  An Internet lawyer understands how to get that information, how to track down who a user may be and who is the potential defendant in a particular matter.  So, if you don’t understand the back-end DNS, how the Whois database systems works,  how registrars deal with domain names and the special rules for domain names, then you are going to be at a huge disadvantage as an attorney in trying to protect your client’s rights.

Let’s talk about cybersquatting.  An Internet lawyer understands what the various statutes are that deal with trademark infringement when it comes to domain names.  So, domain name trademark infringement is a whole specialized area of law that only occurs online.  When someone registers a domain name that incorporates someone else’s trademark, then the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) might apply.  The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy is an arbitration provision that also handles domain name disputes when there is a trademark issue.  Stolen domain names are a big problem on the Internet.  When you are the victim of domain theft, you need an Internet lawyer to help you go after the person who stole your domain.  Whether it’s an employee, partner or someone else that is disgruntled such as a web developer who happened to have registered your trademark protected domain name under their account, you need an Internet lawyer who deals with these problems week in and week out, and understands the best way to accomplish your client goals.

So, whenever I’m answering the question: What is an Internet lawyer?  I always refer people to this analogy.  You would not hire a dentist to do brain surgery.  Nor should you hire an everyday lawyer to handle your problem when it occurs online.  If your issue is one that involves the Internet, contact an Internet law attorney and see how they propose to handle your problem.  Chances are, they’ll have a lot more insight as to the possible approaches and strategies that are most likely to accomplish your client goals.

My name is Internet Law Attorney Enrico Schaefer.  Have a great day!

You’ve been listening to Internet Law Radio.  Whether you are facing a domain name, intellectual property or a complex litigation issue, we have an Internet law attorney ready to answer your questions.

This is Brian Hall an Internet Lawyer with Traverse Legal, PLC, an Internet law firm representing companies throughout the world on all of their Internet law related issues.  Today, I will be answering the question: Do I need an Internet lawyer?  Before I begin to answer that question, let’s talk about what an Internet lawyer is.

An Internet lawyer or Internet attorney is someone that has an understanding of not only the legal principles that apply to the Internet, but also an understanding of the technology and back-end systems that are involved with the Internet.  Therefore, when you’re determining whether or not you need a traditional attorney or somebody that qualifies as an Internet attorney, it is important to understand the differences between the two.

An Internet lawyer is someone that has experience with domain names and how the different uses of those may be in violation or in compliance with the law.  Whether you are a domainer or a cybersquatter, it is sometimes a very thin line that an Internet lawyer can help you determine.

Also, if you are a search engine optimization company or someone that uses search engine optimization to help your website appear higher in search results, it is important to know what is and is not permissible use of someone else’s intellectual property.  For example, how you use a keyword, and whether or not that keyword is the trademark of another, may expose you to liability.  An Internet lawyer will be able to advise you as it relates to use of another’s trademark online.

An Internet lawyer can also help you when it comes to various uses of social media.  For example, if you are using a video posted by someone else or taking blog content posted by someone else; that may suffice as copyright infringement.  An Internet lawyer will help you be able to determine whether or not you may be exposing yourself to such copyright liability.  Likewise, if you are an affiliate networking company or somebody that gains revenue through affiliate networking, it is important for you to know the limits around what you may or may not do.  An Internet lawyer can help advise you as to those issues.  Similarly, anybody dealing with new media these days needs to be consulting with an Internet lawyer, and new media can be classified in many ways.  However, in almost all ways, it deals with the Internet.  And an Internet lawyer will be able to tell you whether or not your website is in compliance with the various laws that are out there, whether or not your website may subject you to penalties by the FTC or other regulatory bodies, and also, whether or not your website is properly presenting information in privacy policies, website agreements, copyright policies and other online agreements so that consumers know how you’re using their information, interacting with them, and how you are holding them liable in the event that they breach terms that you want as part of your website agreements.  You can be advised on all of these issues by an Internet lawyer.    So, in this day and age, when each company has a website presence, regardless of whether or not that company started out merely as a brick and mortar company, an Internet lawyer will be able to advise them on the best way to not only secure and protect their online properties, but also mitigate the risk that they could be exposed to liability for various causes of action.

Ultimately, an Internet lawyer is really someone that you should be consulting just as you would any other lawyer. For example, if you were having a will done, you’d be looking for an attorney that has experience in that particular area.  When answering the question do I need an internet lawyer, I always give the same response.  Yes.  An internet lawyer is someone you should be using in this day and age, given that businesses are doing more and more business online and through their websites and, given that most intellectual property is now secured through use online and on websites, and also, misused more often than not through online and on websites.

So, once again, this has been Brian Hall answering your question: Do I need an Internet lawyer?

You’ve been listening to Internet Law Radio.  Whether you are facing a domain name, intellectual property or a complex litigation issue, we have an Internet law attorney ready to answer your questions.

As the number of internet users, online businesses and social networks grows at an exponential rate, so does the number of legal issues arising from their ever-increasing popularity including cybersquatting, defamation and stolen domain names. Our internet law firm has experience with all facets of internet law, and we’re here to help.