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Content copyright: ownership of information made available online isn''t as clear-cut as that in print or broadcast, so take care, warns Dianne See Morrison.

Article Excerpt
Of all the legal issues surrounding the Internet, perhaps the most contentious are those involving copyright. Legislation covering Internet-specific copyright issues has yet to surface, but intellectual property, whether online or in print, is protected by the Universal Copyright Convention and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works. "Everything you can see, download or play with--bar some stuff that's very old-has copyrights attached to it," says Clive Gringras, a partner at law firm Olswang. "The basic rule on copyright is that to copy it or use it in any shape or form is restricted by the owner."

While the rule seems simple enough, the Web has thrown up some grey areas involving copyright infringement that are still being disputed in the courts.

Domain name disputes

These usually occurred in the earlier days of the Internet, when brands and unknowns were still jostling for position. Domain names--"A user-friendly alias for an Internet address," as Simon Shooter, a partner at Barlow Lyde & Gilbert calls them--were seen as highly important, because the more memorable the name, the easier it would be for users to find the site.

In the case of brand-specific names, there's no contest: Web sites that are not the brand owners can't use a brand name in their URL. In the UK, this was settled when Seiko UK brought a case against Designer Time Wanderweb, which had registered the name seikoshops.co.uk. As Shooter points out, "The registrant had no actual connection to Seiko, other that it sold Seiko watches. The outcome held that the registration took unfair advantage of Seiko's trademark."

Deep linking

The practice of linking, and especially deep linking, is still unresolved.

Deep linking refers to a link to another Web...

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