Selling goods or services online can be a challenge, as there are various legal issues to consider. Here are my top 10 recommendations for protecting your rights when using the internet as a tool for sales or licenses:
- If you are selling an original work of authorship or using one to promote or advertise your services, register each work with the U.S. Copyright Office prior to displaying the work (at least have an application filed). This is needed to provide the full bucket of rights afforded to those who create and/or own original works of authorship.
- Plainly note the works are owned by you and/or are available for license or sale. This can be important to establish certain rights afforded copyright holders.
- Mark each work with copyright management information (CMI), whether you want that to be your company name, byline or creator of a work. This helps establish rights under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act.
- Use lower resolution images. This helps ensure that viewers cannot make a high resolution copy, which could deter them from trying to reproduce or copy the image without authorization.
- For smaller companies in particular, form a legal entity for purposes of listing the goods or services on a website. This is not the same as acquiring a trademark. And the company name may be different than a “brand name” or trademark.
- Develop a “brand” for your website to establish your company as the source of the goods or services you are offering and obtain a registered trademark for that brand name.
- Work to ensure the website is accessible to persons with visual disabilities (at least in substantial compliance with the latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) AA standard or similar).
- Make sure your website has a visible privacy policy and terms of use that comply with the law, which may vary depending on where customers are located, especially if you are collecting site visitors’ personally identifiable information, such as email addresses, names, credit card information, etc.
- The website should also have visible terms of sale/use, which discusses, among other things, return policies, and if you are licensing works, the limits of that license.
- Use the applicable symbols to denote the protections for the work, which can act as a deterrent from unauthorized use: ® for registered trademark; ™ for unregistered trademark; and © followed by the date: for unregistered and registered copyright.
