Domain Name Trademarks

Written by Richard A. Chapo


As your Internet business grows,repparttar value of your domain name increases. The issue of a domain name trademark should move torepparttar 141400 top of your list. You need to guard against unscrupulous competitors that may try to incorporate your domain name in their meta tags to obtain search engine rankings under your name. If you have a domain name trademark, you can go after these individuals and compelrepparttar 141401 search engines to remove their listings.

What Is A Trademark?

A trademark is a distinctive item that is used to identify a logo, product, device, package or service. The trademark identifiesrepparttar 141402 item as being provided by a particular firm. To protect these items you can obtain a mark fromrepparttar 141403 patent and trademark office that prohibits others from trying to gain economic advantage from your mark.

Domain Name

The patent and trademark office views domain names in a unique way. The office viewsrepparttar 141404 “http://www” element as a part ofrepparttar 141405 file transfer process, not your domain name. The “.com”, “.net”, etc., designations are considered top-level domain identifiers and are also disregarded forrepparttar 141406 purpose of a domain name trademark. For example, our domain name is http://www.sandiegobusinesslawfirm.com. If we submittedrepparttar 141407 domain name for registration, onlyrepparttar 141408 “sandiegobusinesslawfirm” portion would be considered for a mark.

Locators Cannot Be Registered

A domain name is a locator for file pages. When you type in your domain name, a server locates and displays files. If a domain is used solely for this purpose, it will not be granted a mark. Instead,repparttar 141409 domain name must be incorporated intorepparttar 141410 site. For instance, Amazon is recognized as an online bookstore andrepparttar 141411 site actually hasrepparttar 141412 word “Amazon” on every page. Since "Amazon.com" is more than a locator, Amazon can apply for and receive a trademark. If Amazon usedrepparttar 141413 domain name, bookstore.com,repparttar 141414 company would be able to register “Amazon”, but not “bookstore.”

Facts About FACTA, Or What Does FACTA Mean To You And Your Company

Written by Steve Mueller


Ever heard of FACTA? Most of us would say “No”. Have you heard that you can get a free credit report? To that we would say, “Yes”. So you have heard of FACTA. But how does that affect me?

FACTA stands for Fair and Accurate Credit Transaction Act. The law went into effect Jan. 1, 2005. FACTA isrepparttar law which allows all Americans access to their credit report once per year. So what does that have to do with you?

On June 1, 2005, a new provision of FACTA went into effect. It says that any employer (even if you only employ one person) whose action or inaction results inrepparttar 140970 loss of employee information, can be fined by federal and state government, and sued in civil court. Bet you didn't know that. But you need to know, and need to know what you can do to protect yourself.

Small Businesses will be affectedrepparttar 140971 most.

‘"A small businessman who makes a mistake could bearrepparttar 140972 brunt of a regulation like this," says James Plummer, policy analyst at Consumer Alert, a non-profit group that focuses on a free-market approach to consumer regulations.’

If you don't shred and information gets out, there are penalties. But what if you do shred all potential employee information, and take all necessary precautions to protect your past, current, and future employees’ identities, andrepparttar 140973 information still gets out somehow? Under FACTA, you could still be held responsible.

You may not think information theft could happen to you, but neither did a lot of companies, universities, government institutions, and businesses that have had employee or customer information stolen from them that have been inrepparttar 140974 news lately:

Lexis Nexis University of Northern Colorado California State University (Chico) University of California – Berkeley University of Maryland Las Vegas Department of Motor Vehicles Bank of America Choice Point Weld County (CO) Employees (information stolen by an inmate while in jail)

How can you, as an employer, minimize your liability?

There are hundreds of things you can do to minimize liability, which are probably things you already do. Document shredding, careful screening of employees who will be coming into contact with personal information of customers and employees, physically locking file drawers with sensitive information, and setting up firewalls on computer equipment connected torepparttar 140975 Internet, among hundreds of other solutions, are all good ideas.

As Ben Franklin said, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, is definitelyrepparttar 140976 case when it comes to securing personal information. However, no matter what prevention steps you take, there is no 100% effective way to be sure that employee’s information won’t be compromised. Even ifrepparttar 140977 information doesn’t get out from your company, an employee can claim that it did.

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