PROTECTING YOUR TRADE MARK ON TWITTER

If you thought about protecting your brand on Twitter and intend to use Twitter to help promote your business, you should consider registering your trade marks as Twitter User IDs. Be aware however that Twitter may suspend your account if it is inactive for greater then 6 months.

If someone is already using a trade mark of yours, as aside from investigating any possible action you could take against them; you could consider doing what Coca Cola did, which is to open a User ID that is very similar to your trade mark and in that way direct traffic to your business. This could be a useful interim step at the very least, while waiting for Twitter to consider any complaint you may have lodged with them regarding use of your trade mark.

As Twitter fever sweeps the globe, a number of serious legal and ethical issues are beginning to surface. One such legal issue that has arisen in recent months is “Twitter Squatting.” This is where someone steals your trade mark on Twitter. A similar problem occurred when domain names first started appearing and people were holding businesses to ‘ransom’ with the purchase of a domain name relevant to that business. So what can you do to protect your trade mark on Twitter?

What is Twitter Squatting?
Each Twitter user has their own unique user ID which appears as their screen name. With more people signing up to Twitter everyday, businesses are finding that ‘Twitter squatters’ are registering User IDs that ‘steal’ a businesses registered trademark. Coca Cola for example presumably had to register CocaColaCo as its user ID initially due to a third party already having grabbed CocaCola as their User ID.

For more information visit Dynamic Business Magazine.