The Waterfront Partnership

Website Content

The contents of a website and its associated domain name often raise many intellectual property concerns. These primarily stem from the international nature of the internet and the ease and speed with which material on the internet can be accessed and copied.

Special considerations apply when entering into online contracts. Please see our Internet and Data Protection section of Legal Basics.

To protect the content of your website, you should be mindful of the following issues:

• If you use a designer to create a website for you, you should ensure that the intellectual property rights in the website are assigned to you in writing, otherwise you could be forced to pay the designer every time you want to make changes to your website. You should also ensure that the designer provides you with written warranties and indemnities stating that your website does not breach anyone-else's intellectual property rights.
• The content on your website must be your (or the designer's) own independent creation and must not copied from any other source, otherwise you could be at risk of being sued for copyright and trade mark infringement, and potentially passing off.
• If your website contains material which has originated from a third party, you must ensure that this third party either (i) assigns to you in writing all associated intellectual property rights; or (ii) enters into an express written licence with you allowing for reproduction world-wide in an on-line electronic form; otherwise the third party could sue you for copyright infringement.
• Your website should contain a copyright and (if applicable) a trade mark notice, preferably on each page, which makes it clear that you own the copyright and trademarks used on the site, and that the copying and use of the content and mark may only be done under licence from you. For the same reasons, you should also place a ® symbol and a TM symbol (in superscript) after each registered and unregistered trade mark used on the website, respectively.
• If you hold data about identifiable individuals as a consequence of your website operations, for example your website features a guest book where users of the site can leave their details, you will need to notify the Information Commissioner's office, pay a small fee (around £35) and ensure you comply with data protection legislation.
• Your website should normally include a disclaimer which excludes any liability for reliance by users on the information in the website, and this disclaimer should be brought to the attention of the website user i.e. by having a prominent hyperlink to the disclaimer on the home page.
• Linking to other websites can amount to copyright infringement. The best course of action is always to ask permission from the website owner before linking to it and to include in your disclaimer a statement to the effect that you do not endorse or accept liability for the content of any of any third party websites.

In general, owning registered trade marks is a valuable weapon in the online environment as it gives you stronger and clearer rights of legal action, as opposed to relying only on passing off or copyright.

In addition to advising how best to legally protect your website, we advise on all types of disputes relating to the online environment, including contractual disputes, cyber squatting, Nominet and ICANN dispute resolution procedures, website content copying and metatag misuse.