Intellectual Property Rights

Many people believe the fact that material is posted on the world wide web means it is in the "public domain" or otherwise free to be taken, copied or used by others. However, creators of web content probably have copyright, trademark and other rights in the material they create. Therefore, copying, modifying and possibly linking to content created by others could expose you to legal liability.

No Copying Allowed! When you prepare pages you generally should use only material (text, photographs, etc.) and trademarks/names that you created or own yourself or licensed from the owners.

No Unauthorised Linking to Photos or Documents! You cannot link to somebody else's picture or documents (so it appears in your page) without the owner's permission.

What is a Trademark?
A trademark is a name or logo used by a company (or person) to identify its goods or services.

Trademarks - No Confusing Content! If you are selling a brand name product, you can probably show a picture of the product and refer to the company by name, but you cannot do so in such a way that it suggests that your sale is approved, sponsored or endorsed by the manufacturer. Also, you must be careful not to sell products which bear the brand name of a company which did not make the product.

Here are some examples of potentially infringing content:

You prepare a page to sell non-branded sunglasses, but you use the Rayban® trademark in your listing

You are selling a non-Disney® stuffed animal, but use a picture of Mickey Mouse® in your listing

What is a copyright?

A copyright is the protection given in the United Kingdom to certain original works of authorship, including text, pictures, music, etc. The owner of a copyright holds the exclusive right to duplicate, distribute and create derivative works from his work. Pages often contain text, photographs and the names/trademarks of companies. The text and photographs which you create and use in pages may be protected by copyright laws.

If you copy someone else's text or original photograph, or copy text or photographs from any other place (depending upon how much is copied), you may be infringing someone's copyright. They may be able to request the removal of your page or some of its content by submitting a “Notice of Alleged Infringement” form. Here are some examples of potentially infringing content:

You scan a photograph of someone famous (without permission) and use in a page

You copy someone else's text and (without permission) paste it into your own page (Making slight modifications to the text may not relieve you of liability if it is substantially similar to the original text.)

You copy the URL of a photograph appearing on a another's web site or causing the photograph to appear in your page (without permission

You copy the URL of a newspaper causing a specific page to appear in your page(without permission)

For more information about copyrights and trademarks

·         UK legislation

·         Copyright Licensing Agency (United Kingdom)

·         The Creators' Rights Alliance

·         Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society

·         Mechanical Copyright Protection Society

·         International Trademark Association