INTERNET PLATFORMS
The growth of the Internet has been accompanied by a multiplication of opportunities for infringement, as Korcan Dericioglu explains.
Social media platforms are the most widely- discussed online area in terms of intellectual property infringement, after Internet domain names. Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, YouTube and others are designed to encourage people to ‘share’. They allow you to share stories about the places you have visited, work you have done, photos you have taken and the ideas you have. This enables people to express themselves, and to see what others are doing. The aim is to encourage everybody to share and enhance interaction.
T e social media sites are easy to use: a user name and an email address are suffi cient for creating an account. Additionally, policies are presented and guarantees are provided to gain confi dence and encourage use of the system. Confi dentiality of personal information is guaranteed, and the content provided by the user is shared with people the user specifi es. T e user is not even obliged to provide his or her real name.
However, this simple signing-up system and anonymity have created a safe harbour for people acting in bad faith (or, at least, for people not acting in good faith). These problems are not new: after the advent of the Internet, such actions appeared first on chat channels, then in domain names and, more recently, in social media.
Each platform has its own policies and dispute resolution mechanisms to deal with malicious acts. T ese tend to seek to balance the protection of personal/commercial rights with freedom of thought and expression. However, implementation and interpretation of the body of rules set by these mechanisms show diff erences which may lead to making the nature of every breach and measure unique as a result.
Historically, infringements of IP rights have been the most severe in Internet domain names. T e universal structure of the Internet and the insuffi ciency of international judicial cooperation gave rise to the concept of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) system. Established to fi ght against the increasing number of infringement actions, UDRP has provided solutions to many problems since it entered into force in 1999. However, it is to be noted that the rules relating to the UDRP process are relevant solely to domain names—sub-domain names are leſt out of its scope. Meanwhile, the strictness of bad faith criteria, and the panellist fee of $1,500, have infl uenced registration trends.
www.worldipreview.com World Intellectual Property Review May/June 2012 39
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