The Internet environment operates by its own rules and laws, and to act in it effectively, you must at least be familiar with them.
Today it is difficult to find any business that is not represented on the Internet. The Internet opens up great opportunities for businesspeople to promote their goods and services. There are no geographical barriers in the digital environment, and half of the world’s population can learn about a business in a matter of hours, which creates a good prerequisite for making money. The downside to this greater opportunity is the prevalence of online threats in an environment which is often hostile. One such threat is that a profitable product or idea can easily be copied or stolen by others. This includes the business strategies used for online promotion. The more successful the business, the more it will attract imitation – often by people who can run the same activities at lower production costs. Often a company will not even know when it is under attack in this way or subject to online raidings. There are even cases where registered trademarks have been lost to competitors who challenge patents or obtain patents in different countries.
Protecting your business from theft and copying on the Internet is not a fad, but a market requirement.
When a business goes online, for example, to sell goods, there are people who look and say, “Oh, that’s a cool topic. I can carry this stuff too, can’t I? Now I don’t have to think about what to do”. Six months pass, and the copy begins to displace the original. Initially the first mover has a successful business, but they gradually find out that after a while, they simply provided a business idea from which others profit. This is a frequently occurring scenario. Even when someone spends a lot of money on their social media operations, this money can be wasted if their patent is lost.
While states have tried to regulate the Internet, this has been largely ineffective. The Internet is a separate world with its own laws, rules, and protections. It is difficult to bring under anybody’s jurisdiction. Businesses may wish there was a state with laws which can be used effectively online, but instead, the Internet still functions like a separate state in its own right, a different world or civilization, one as alien to the known world as if businesses were trading on Mars.
On August 19, 2021 in the Kyiv office of the European Academy of Sciences of Ukraine under the patronage of the Information Security Institute, a meeting took place on the topic of “How to protect your business from online intellectual property offenses”. Experts looked at the most pressing questions, with a focus on the marketing of products online. They discussed the frequency of the phenomenon of online raiding, which it was concluded has distinct characteristics different from offline instances of unfair competition and corporate takeover, and that is it much more extensive than is realized.
Source: Digital World
