Dozier Internet Law Internet Lawyers

Dozier Internet Law Interview

Beginning of interview with Ralph Wilson

Ralph Wilson: Hi, this is Ralph Wilson with Web Marketing Today. I'm here with John W. Dozier, Jr., who is a pioneer in Internet Law. And, what I've asked him today is if he would talk to us about the 5 hottest things, the problems that might face small to media business, something that we need to be aware of.

Ralph Wilson: John, what do you see out there and what's important?

John: You know, it's interesting how things evolve over time. Five weeks ago, I might have given you a different list. But, probably the most important thing today is we sit here in August of 2007, is number 1 would be privacy issues, making sure that your website has the proper privacy provisions that comply with the law. And, the law basically is whatever you say you're going to do, you have to do. There are some restrictions beyond that in terms of data integrity and reporting losses. That's new law that's evolving. So, you need to stay on top of that. California does require, by the way, California does require a Privacy Policy on every website.

Ralph Wilson: Now you mentioned in the last few weeks, this has kind of come to the surface in a new way. What's happened?

John: Well, we're continuing to see data breaches, data loss. But, we're also seeing a number of laws that are working their way through Congress as well as at the state level, dealing with creating obligations on webmasters or owners of sites to report data losses. And, you're also seeing a much greater effort by the credit card companies to enforce the rules that they set forth several years ago about what you have to do in terms of maintaining your information.

Ralph Wilson: Okay. Well, what other hot issues do you see John?

John: I think one of the most significant, probably liabilities for the small business is affiliate misconduct. We're dealing with a lot of cases right now where we have affiliates that are alleged to have spammed, or alleged to have committed trademark infringement, copyright infringement, and instead of the affiliate simply being named in the lawsuits, we have a lot of very well-respected and admirable small companies that are getting caught up in really a consequence of not doing appropriate due diligence and not establishing the rules of engagement and not having a way to make sure that their affiliate marketers are following those rules.

Ralph Wilson: I know quick is not a word that attorneys use, but, are there any quick things that affiliates, those that have affiliate programs need to do right now to protect themselves if they haven't already?

John: I would say from a quick standpoint, tighten up your roster of affiliates. Start being extremely discriminating and by no means should you allow someone to market your products or services without first vetting their qualifications and their reputation.

Ralph Wilson: So, in other words, don't just have open enrollment for affiliates, that's dangerous.

John: That is deadly.

Ralph Wilson: Okay. What else do you see on the horizon here that's really important to talk about?

John: Well, I think that a lot of our clients are seeing the importance of search engine optimization and pay-per-click. I think it's becoming more and more prevalent as a method of really being successful on the web. And what we're seeing is, clients having made mistakes throughout their development of their business, which makes it very difficult for them to protect their business. So, while you'd like to think they could use search engine optimization and pay- per-click to their benefit, their competitors are using it to their detriment because they haven't protected their trademarks, they've been sloppy in the way that they've created ownership of copyrights and they'd like to enforce copyright. For instance, you know, someone has stolen my content on my website. Well, you can't do anything about it unless you own it. And, in a lot of instances, what we're finding is clients don't even own their own website, the web developer does.

Ralph Wilson: So, the first thing then is, who owns your site?

John: That's exactly correct. And, unless you have a written agreement with your web developer that they're transferring ownership to you, they're going to own your site, you'll have the right to use your site. So, you won't even have enforcement rights in trademark . . . in infringement situations.

Ralph Wilson: That's huge. Now is it possible to sue them to get ownership? Or, is that iffy these days?

John: First of all, it's a matter of negotiation. Your web developer may very well negotiate it whether it was in good faith or not, you got a done deal. So, no, you don't have a particularly strong recourse there, except to build a new website. If you want to have the protections . . . protecting your brand and protecting your identity on the web.

Ralph Wilson: So, they would, without other prior agreement, they would own the actual site itself, though not your particular content or your trademarks or brand. Something like that?

John: They would own the site and the creative elements that they created. Which oftentimes is so integrated with your creative contributions, that it's difficult to differentiate between the two, and the burden is on you to show infringement. So, if you can't identify with particularity what your contribution was, solely your contribution, you're not going to be able to prove your ownership. The biggest challenge is, the easiest solution to this, is simply to go to the website developer and ask for an assignment before you go down the path of trying to enforce your copyright rights. That's a legal document. There's some expense involved there, but oftentimes, they won't give you that assignment because they want to use the work that they've done on your website for the next client.

Ralph Wilson: Yep. What else do you see out there that's really important for small to medium businesses to be looking at?

John: I think looking down the road in terms of where you're going to be in 12 and 18 months is critically important and making the decisions today, that are going to make a difference then. For instance, a lot of small businesses say, well I don't want to go through the expense of trademark registration, I really don't want to file a copyright application, we'll just pull off a contract from a website to use for my user agreement and, you know, on and on. You have to understand that there are consequences to that. Oftentimes, it's a great decision at the time, and it turns out to have really bad consequences if your site's successful. If your site's not going to be successful, it's probably a fantastic decision.

Ralph Wilson: But, you don't know ahead of time.

John: You sure don't. And, it's amazing that there is a direct relationship between the success of your online company and the number of people that are trying to steal from you.

Ralph Wilson: Okay. Well thank you John for taking this time with us today. Tell me the name of your company and briefly what do you do?

John: Dozier Internet Law. We're located in Virginia and in California. We're a law firm that's just dedicated solely and exclusively to the law of the Internet.

Ralph Wilson: And your web address?

John: It's www.cybertriallawyer.com.

Ralph Wilson: Thank you John. I appreciate what you're doing for the industry as well.

John: Thank you.

Ralph Wilson: This is Web Marketing Today at Search Engine Strategy.

Dozier Internet Law Interview End

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