Areas of Cyberlaw - Intellectual Property Law

In Canada, intellectual property is protected by law, equally offline and on the Internet. There are a number of distinct categories that protect intellectual property, including the following:

Patents

A patent protects the rights of then inventor for up to 20 years after it is filed. The inventor has the exclusive right to sell, license or otherwise use the patent. In exchange, the inventor publishes a full description of the invention so all Canadians can benefit from the advance in technology and knowledge.

Trade-marks

A trade-mark is a word, a symbol, a design (or a combination of these features), used to distinguish the wares or services of one person or organization from those of others in the marketplace. Trade-marks come to represent not only actual wares and services, but the reputation of the producer. As such, they are considered valuable intellectual property.

Copyrights

Only the owner of copyright, very often the creator of the work, is allowed to produce or reproduce the work in question or to permit anyone else to do so. Copyright applies to all original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works.

With respect to the Internet, the most common copyright infringement is the unauthorized posting of copyright material in the content of a Web site.

Intellectual Property law in Canada permits the limited use of copyright material in two specific circumstances. The first is "Fair Use", meaning for private study or research and for criticism, review or summary if the source and the author are identified. The second is under "Implied License", meaning the copyright owner invites others to make use of the work in a certain way and thus a consent or license to use the work is implied. For example, by posting a copyright work to a server there is, or may be, an implied license authorizing whatever reproduction is necessary for accessing and viewing.

The Canadian Intellectual Property Office offers valuable information and searchable databases for patents, trade-marks and copyrights.

Domain Names

As businesses prefer to have a domain identical or similar to their corporate name or trade-mark, domain names can create legal problems when they are in conflict with another registered trade-mark. The result is a domain name dispute in which businesses disagree as to who should be permitted to own a particular domain name.

Each domain name agency has their own processes and procedures for managing domain name disputes. In Canada, .CA domain names are controlled by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). To resolve domain name disputes, the organization has established the CIRA Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

Internationally, Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is responsible for the registration and governance of top level domain names. ICANN has also established Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policies.

To avoid a domain name dispute, businesses should perform trademark searches and register all trade-marks and names intended for inclusion in a company Web site.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are code-level information that is used by search engines to index Web sites. If words or phrases which are index terms for high traffic sites are added to the meta tag field of another Web site it, in turn, is likely to be included in search engine results. If the terms "borrowed" from other sites are trade-marks, names or copyright material, the "borrowing" may be actionable.

A variation of this tactic is to copy large portions of site content (also indexed by search engines) and then make the content invisible by changing its colour to match the page background colour. The effect is to appropriate another site's indexability. This too is actionable if the appropriated content is protected by copyright. As search engines evolve, they are taking steps against this type of behaviour by permanently de-listing the offending party's Web site.