Think about the best brands on the Internet- Amazon, eBay, Google, Facebook for example.  People choose to visit sites and do business with these companies sometimes because of their brand reputation. While you may be operating a much smaller business, your brand is still going to be the most valuable asset to your technology or online business.

Now, as you develop your brand and establish your trade names and trademarks, there may be others out there who will seek to exploit them.  One method includes attempt to try to confuse the public into buying their products and services based on the customers thinking it is part of your company – this is through the unlawful use of your trade names or trademarks on your site.

If you ever find one of these culprits, what can you do?  There are two things you can do immediately.

1. First, find the owner of the site with the offending content and send them a cease and desist letter.  This is basically a letter notifying them of the infringement and asking them to remove your marks and any other infringing content from their website immediately.  You can send this directly or have your lawyer send out on law firm letterhead (there is nothing to get people to behave more than sending letter from a lawyer).

2. Second, there is a law called the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which provides an avenue for you to send a letter to the internet service provider or the website that is hosting the content where your trademark resides.  Now, this company can be a hosting provider like GoDaddy or Hostgator, but it also includes every major website that hosts content (e.g., Google, Yahoo, Facebook, YouTube, Craigslist).

They will have a policy on their sites for how you can notify them of an infringement in their hosted content.  Make sure you follow their policies exactly as written.  They all have staff dedicated to this because if they do not take down infringing content once they are put on notice of it, they could later be held liable.  The law requires that have a policy.

The law has specific requirements for what should be in the notice to the service provider and you should review the specific provision before preparing one, but generally it requires -

- a signature of the person who owns the trademark being infringed

- adequate description and location of the infringing material (URL link)

- information to help the provider contact you

- a statement that you in good faith believe that the use of the material being complained of is not authorized by the owner or the law

- certification of accuracy