Domain Names and copyright for online businesses

21 March 2010

Domain Names and copyright for online businesses

By Paul Bicknell

Cyber-squatting is the term given to those who purchase particularly desirable domain names with a view to selling them on to rights holders. An example would be where a person purchases Lawdit.com and then tries to sell that domain name to Lawdit.

There is a number of dispute resolution procedures set up to deal with cyber-squatting, and in the majority of cases the rights holder, that is the person who has an IP right in that name, succeeds against the cyber-squatter.

Under the laws of England and Wales you do not need to register for copyright: there is no formal registration process for copyright. So provided that the work either is a literally, dramatic, musical, artistic, film or a broadcast and that work falls with the definition of originality ie that the person who created the work exerted sufficient labor skill and judgment when creating the work, then the work will be protected by copyright.

Take a website for example, the text of the site could be protected as a literary work, the pictures as photographic works arguably even artistic works. Also any clips or videos could be protected as a film and or a dramatic work.

Generally the position as to ownership of these individual copyrights will belong to different people, therefore it is important to instruct a solicitor to complete a well drafted copyright assignment detailing who owns what under the site - this will bring clarity as to what each person can or cannot do in relation the works.

By Paul Bicknell assistant to Izaz Ali (izaz.ali@lawdit.co.uk) Izaz Ali is a commercial Solicitor Advocate who specialises in information technology law and intellectual property law with an emphasis on IT, escrow and buying and selling online businesses.