Following on from our article on start- up businesses and website development part of building an internet presence will also be the acquisition and maintenance of a domain name. This may also bring problems with it.
A domain name is the name of the website that will represent you and your business on the internet, for example www.microsoft.com, the domain being Microsoft. Essentially the domain name is your signpost on the internet to attract new customers and refer existing customers too. Purchasing a domain is easy, you just need to type “domain name” into any one of the search engines and a number of websites offering this service come up. Some of these websites even offer the additional bonus of checking the availability of your domain name amongst offering other services such as hosting your website free for six months. At this point, it should be noted that you should always check that you are not duplicating any domain names, trade or business names and even if you need to you will at the very least have to ensure that you are not trading within the same business sector.
You are ready to go, you have purchased a brand new domain name www.theheroplumbers.co.uk , have a newly designed website and potentially many new customers too.
Initially everything is fantastic you have many new customers and things could not be better. A few months later, it appears that business is quietening down for no obvious reasons, especially in the run up to Christmas, broken heating systems, blocked toilets amongst a number of other things. You do not understand where you have gone wrong; after all, you are The Hero Plumbers offering the best deals and service on the market. When speaking to the odd customer one name is mentioned to you more and more frequently “Rocky the plumber”. For no obvious reasons your customers seem to associate him with your company too. One day you receive a major customer complaint, a nasty toilet blockage, which has ended up in disaster, blocking all of the toilets in a large block of flat. Of course, your initial thought is one of disbelief and concern until you realise that “Rocky the plumber” must have carried out the work. He really seems to rock many worlds, but you are becoming increasingly concerned, that people associate him with your business, having received a number of telephone calls.
One evening you finally decide to take the time to find “Rocky the plumber” on the internet by typing his name into one of the search engines. You find his website almost immediately. www.Rockytheplumber.co.uk. You are shocked to find that his website is a 100% replica of your website. You have a number of flashbacks, loss of business, complaints etc……. you are angry, furious, but what do you do next? Rocky is clearly damaging your business reputation and stealing your customers.
Unfortunately the above story is not an uncommon occurrence and unless businesses act immediately, especially those that heavily rely on internet trade, it might even result in their failure altogether.
Clearly Rocky the plumber could be committing a number of offences, such as breaching the copyright in your website, passing himself off as you and possibly even infringing your trademarks. Nevertheless, how do you address all of these issues? There are a numbers of ways to approach these kinds of problems, although in order to be able to provide you with the most suitable advice we must establish what you are looking to achieve, what the damage is to your business and also which route would commercially be the best for you to pursue. A traditional remedy available to you would be to try and obtain an injunction which should have the effect of stopping the offender from continuing with his conduct. However, an application for an injunction has to be made within a given period and is very cost intense and therefore not necessarily the most appropriate solution for a start –up business. Alternatively, a more cost effective solution would be to get the offender to agree to stop this conduct and if applicable get him to agree to sign over his website to you or at least to suspend it, as he would otherwise face the possibility of court proceedings for example for breach of copyright. Depending on the circumstances, this approach tends to be favoured as it is commercially more viable, because apart from being very cost effective on the one hand, it also permits you continue to stay focused on the day-to-day running of your business. There are various other routes too that could be followed to deal with Rocky’s misdemeanours.
As you can see from the above, there are a number of solutions and remedies available to you, although time is usually of the essence. If you have found out that you have a “Rocky” in your life, please give Nicky Androsov a call on 01689 887 859 for a preliminary discussion.
