Web Site Legal Audit:
How to Protect Your Web Site

Part 1

Your web site can be a great source of business, especially for your competitors.  There appears to be an assumption that, once a web site is completed and online, it cares for itself and that it needs no ongoing oversight and support. After the web designer has created the site, it will always need constant care if it is going to continue to provide the level of performance and the benefits you expect.  Think of it as a plant in the garden.  After it is planted, it still needs tending and pruning and fertilizer.  The same is true with a web site.

Many of the ongoing maintenance duties for a web site are not legal in nature and therefore are not the subject of this article (such as keeping the content fresh and avoiding dead-end links).  However, there are several maintenance issues that are specifically legal in nature and require regular care and review.  That is the purpose of the web legal audit.

The web site legal audit includes:

1. Review OnLine Misuse of Trademarks

2. Check dates for Domain Name renewal

3. Review all links to the web site

4. Review all links from the web site

5. Check status of web host.

Review OnLine Misuse of Trademarks.

The first step in the audit is to check the integrity of your trademarks.  This review is to make sure that competitors are not using your trademarks to lure business to their web sites.  A competitor may hide your trademarks on its own web site in such a way that will cause their site to appear in web search results, such as when an Internet user types your trademarks into a search request.

This result is caused by the way search engines work.  Search engines send out electronic snoopers over the Internet.  These snoopers (often called spiders) record a variety of information, including information that is invisible to humans, such as trademarks hidden in the web coding or even hidden in plain site in the same color as the background on a page.  Humans would not see white letters on a white background, but the snoopers do not see in color; they just recognize the electronic signals.  When the snoopers report back to their search engines, they may have picked up your trademarks hidden in your competitor’s site.

Word recognition is one of several criteria that search engines use to create a search results list. The use of the trademarks may cause your competitor’s site to be listed in a search for your trademark because your competitor has buried your trademarks in its site.

To see if competitors have buried your trademarks in their web sites, type your trademarks into a search engine (Google, Yahoo, etc.) to see if any competitors’ web sites appear.  If a competing site does appear, run a background search on the sites that appeared on the search list, to see if your trademarks are used.  If you use Internet Explorer, click on the “View” button on the toolbar. When the drop down screen appears, click on “Source.” A new box will appear in the middle of the screen.  This box looks under the web page to the actual HTML code of the site.

After the box appears on the screen, run a search for your trademark by clicking on the  “Edit” button and then “Find.”  When the “Find” box appears, type in the trademark(s) and click “Enter” to search for the trademarks.  If none are found, no trademarks are hidden in the coding.  If your trademarks are found buried in a competitor’s web site, it is time to call your information technology attorney.

Part 2 of the Web Site Legal Audit will appear in the next edition of ITechLaw.

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