Copy Right

Business may have ownership of their corporate name, business name, trade name, domain name or trade mark. It has been argued that business may also have ownership of their material and publications, in print, on the radio or TV or on the Internet.

Some of these marks are:

• Corporate Names: As a general rule in Canada the name should be distinct and have some connection with the type of business it does (i.e. distributors, manufacturers). Some names also include a description of the business legal status (i.e. LTD, inc.)
• Trade Names: A name used by a business to describe a specific part of its business (i.e. car rentals, general contract, electrical contractors etc.)
• trademarks: Are marks that are distinctive to the enterprise and are used to identify their ownership of the service or its goods.
• Internet Domain Names: Names selected on the Internet that are specifically used to identify the business or service of the web site. There can only be one Internet Domain Name for exclusive use by its owner. These Domain names often attempt to incorporate key trade marks of its owner.

  Use of any of the above Names and Marks by someone other then its owner may result in legal action against the person using the "mark". Specific to the Internet, there has been disputes over similarities between a "Domain Name" and a well know trade mark or name.

  There has been more recent occasions where some unscrupulous parties have stolen an entire web site, its material and its graphics and published the site at a different URL. In cases where those parties have been caught the entire pirated site has been removed by the ISPs.

  Web masters have learned how to "trick" search engines with the use of Meta Tags (Those are the tags in HTML code, that are not visible to the person viewing the site, but visible to the search engines that list the various sites) Using key words can cause a search engine to list a page under various categories. The misuse of these tags has become more common as web masters will often put in "Trade Names" to cause their page to appear towards the top of any search engine list. For example a travel agency may use the words "Mickey Mouse", "Walt Disney", or "Disney World" to bring users to their site and hopefully buy package tours. A more obvious example of misuse is evident on some "adult sites" where the worlds "Playboy", and "Playmate" were used to attract visitors. In the Playboy case the court ordered that the defendants stop using "Playboy" and "Playmate" in their sites meta tags.