Trademark infringement is the illegal use of another company's symbol, design or a recognizable sign collectively known as a trademark. Companies use specific trademarks for the purpose of identifying their products or service, and that differentiates it from other companies or organizations dealing in similar products. The law is very clear in dealing with trademark infringement. The original owner of the trademark can file a case against the infringer to prevent further use of the service mark and after that compensate the infringed party. With the technological development across the globe, trademark infringement is a common scenario. The internet is an example of how technology has been used as leverage in infringement (Arthur, 2014). In using the internet, different websites belonging to established organizations can be utilized by other companies in a bid to attract prospective customers.
A company known as McJobs is utilizing a legitimate company’s website known as McDonald to attract customers. On clicking the site McDonalds.com, one is instead taken to McJobs site where before leaving one has to acknowledge several advertisements for employment agencies. This only means that the legitimate McDonald's website is illegally being used by other malicious companies to advertise their goods and as a result denying McDonald potential customers. The analysis will be on how the company should go about this matter and discussing the remedies that are available.
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The McDonald Company must act very fast to combat this kind of infringement before the prospect of them losing their original trademark rights. The company should begin first by hiring a website investigator whose work will be to track and identify the companies involved in the infringement practice. If the investigator successfully tracks them down, they should identify the name and address of the domain name they are using. It is also important to evaluate if the infringers have got any reasonable explanation of using the site. Then McDonald Company should negotiate with them to pull down their advertisement on the website. If this fails, then MacDonald has no option but to terminate the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the company (Ginsburg et al., 2014). This is necessary because it will hinder future malicious access from such companies. The internet protocol is a unique address that identifies a specific website.
Alternatively, McDonald has another option of going to court and filing a case against the infringers. The trademark of the legitimate company, in this case, McDonald must have intellectual property that will be used in the court of law as evidence. The intellectual property is the trade secrets that define the trademark. Filing a lawsuit against the infringers will be a good step in ensuring that they are brought to book, and hence future infringement will be taken care of. However, in his journey to the court, there must be steps to be followed. As the trademark owner, he must present an original, certified copy of the trademark's registration (Kayser et al., 2014). Secondly, he must produce evidence that he had written a notice to the potential infringer warning them of their actions. However, if there is any other way this can be solved outside court the better because in most cases following the lawsuit is a very expensive procedure.
The McDonald Company has the moral obligation of protecting their trademark through monitoring of infringements and putting up specific programs that will deal with the infringers. There are several internet tools that can be used to identify trademark issues. A good example of such a program is the use of the Google alert. It is set up for the trademark or a specific brand name and alerts the user of any occasion where the same trademark has been used elsewhere on the World Wide Web. The information from the alert is important as it may be helpful in identifying the possible threat of infringement or to determine if the use of the trademark is of threat or not.
As a remedy step, McDonald should take action and protect his trademark on the internet by registering key elements of the service mark to the operating domain names hence preventing the possibility of infringement by the third parties. They should also be carrying out a periodic internet search to establish if there is any inconsistency in the operations of their website. Also, McDonald should find a good trademark infringement attorney and seek advice on whether or not the trademark will have a risk of being infringed in the future and hence direct him on the appropriate approach to take. Such an initiative is referred to as a trademark availability assessment ( Klein & Wueller, 2016).
In conclusion, McDonald's has some ways that he can go about to combat the infringement ranging from negotiation to considering the court procedure. However, the most important thing is to protect his trademark from future infiltration. It is vital to ensure that the trademark is registered under the law and it is part of the company's intellectual property rights. The company should also employ its initiatives against infringement by carrying out thorough random internet searches, setting up programs that can alert the company on possible infringements and also invest on IT experts who will ensure the safety of their website. Before McDonald's ventures into the expensive lawsuit, he should explore all the possible ways of dealing with the situation. If the court process is the best solution, then it is important for him to have all the evidence against the infringers that will help him win the case.
References
Arthur, B. R. (2014). Always Protect Your Brand: Trademark Infringement Protection for Athletes using Social Media Sites. DePaul J. Sports L. & Contemp. Probs. , 10 , 83.
Ginsburg, J. C., Cotton, A., Weigel, B., Rich, B., Peguera, M., & Calboli, I. (2014). Kernochan Center for Law, Media, and the Arts Panel Transcript: Who's Left Holding the [Brand Name] Bag? Secondary Liability for Trademark Infringement on the Internet. Columbia Journal of Law and the Arts , 37 (4), 621-637.
Kayser, S. M., Wheatley, L. J., Li, C. L., Goebel, M., Stoerzinger, G., McCulloch, A., ... & Fortunet, E. (2014). Combating contributory infringement on the internet. INTA Bulletin , 69 (9).
Klein, D. O., & Wueller, J. R. (2016). Trademark Enforcement and Internet Search Advertising: A Regulatory Risk for Brand Owners.
