Introduction
A Briefest of Histories

Further Information:

• The legal issues affecting a new brand name
• The legal issues affecting a new logo
• The legal issues affecting a new design
• Protecting a new brand name or new logo
• Protecting new designs
• Protecting ideas
• A Trade Mark Attorney
• Enforcement
• Defending a trade mark
• Defending other IP rights
• Delimitation of rights
• Licensing
• Franchising
• Exploitation of IP rights
• Exploitation of Intellectual Property rights: raising funds and securitisation
• Intellectual Property Rights as investments
• Acquisition and transfer
• Registration of transactions
• E-commerce and the internet
• Trade Marks and the internet/e-commerce - Businesses, services and products are identified by
their brands in the first instance (websites and URLs or domain names often incorporate a
brand/trade mark) and they will be the first things seen by anyone surfing the internet. In legal terms
brands are trade marks and are capable of ownership, and can equally be the source of dispute if a
brand is identical or too similar to a trade mark of a competitor. Moreover, ownership of a trade mark
registration in one territory does not mean it is available for use by that owner in another. If a website
“sells” products or services outside the territory where the owner has a trade mark registration, it may
be someone else that owns that trade mark in the second territory and whose rights might be
infringed. Similar questions might apply to product designs with products being advertised or sold into
a territory where someone other than the seller owns the rights to a similar design.
• Domain names, “ownership” of a name and cyber-squatting
• Disputing domain names
• Websites and e-commerce – legal issues
• Contractual issues in e-commerce
• The legal issues affecting advertising
• Intellectual Property and Insurance
• Intellectual Property and Insolvency

© 2008 Decisis Limited.