Ritter Spencer Cheng attorney Chelsie Spencer is featured this morning on Fit Small Business. In the article, Top 28 Digital Branding Strategies, Mrs. Spencer advises content creators to ensure that the digital content they place online is legally protected.
Distinguishing your brand in the digital age can be a challenge, particularly due to the easy and instant access of information online and heightened market congestion. Digital theft of intellectual property is quite prevalent in the online age; however, content creators and brand owners can take steps to legally protect their works.
Digital content creators may seek both copyright registration and trademark registration to protect eligible content. Copyright registration allows the content owner to bring suit and to recover statutory damages in federal court. The Supreme Court will be deciding the issue of whether federal copyright registration is a prerequisite to bringing a lawsuit in federal court this year due to a current circuit split on the issue. Trademark registration is another outlet through which content owners and creators may protect their brand. Trademark registration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office provides numerous benefits for brand owners, including the right to use the ® symbol. Trademark registration provides nationwide usage rights as the senior user of the mark and provides constructive notice of your claim to the mark. Once you hold a trademark registration, you can even record that registration with Customs and Border Patrol to prevent importation of infringing goods at the border.
In this digital age, infringers can easily and quickly replicate your content and/or counterfeit your goods and list them for sale on e-commerce websites such as Amazon. Many of these e-commerce platforms require proof of registration before they will take action against a potential infringer and remove the infringing content. For example, enrollment in the Amazon Brand Registry service is predicated upon the requirement that the registrant holds a valid trademark for either a standard character or logo mark. Absent that registration, you cannot enroll in the program.
To read Mrs. Spencer’s contribution regarding top digital branding strategies, please refer to the article located here: https://fitsmallbusiness.com/digital-branding-strategies.
If you have a trademark for registration or need a trademark attorney, please contact our office today at 214-295-5074 or via email at info@ritterspencer.com
