There are a number of legal caveats related to having a web based business that you need to be aware of, this article summarizes these issues.
When you create a web site always submit a draft to a competent attorney in this area to review all aspects of the web site before the web site is publicly disclosed to protect yourself. The following list is by no means complete, however, is given as a starting point for issue for you to consider in the creation and operation of your website.
SPAM
1. Watch for spam creation on your part, as sending unsolicited emails or email newsletters while being a great marketing tool, requires the following:
2. Compliance with federal law entitled the CAM SPAM act is required, which necessitates the following when you send unsolicited commercial e-mails you must include the following; the physical address and e-mail of the sender, identification of the e-mail as a solicitation (not required in the subject line), and instructions to the e-mail recipient on how to electronically opt out of receiving further solicitation e-mails from you.
However, if you send a subsequent e-mails to a customer that has initially responded back to complete a transaction, information, or purchase from you, then identification of the subsequent e-mails as a solicitation and electronic opt out instructions from receiving further e-mails is not required, however, it is wise required to identify the e-mail sender's physical address and e-mail address always.
TRADEMARKS
3. If you use third-party trademarks on your web site you must be very careful to use the third-party trademarks such a way as to not create a claim of trademark infringement. The way you use third-party trademarks must be clearly identified that you are using the trademark in such a way is to not cause customer confusion as to your use of the third-party trademark and the trademark owner’s use. Thus, you cannot use a third-party trademark to indicate a source or origin of goods and/or services as this would constitute a traditional trademark use which could lead to trademark infringement.
What this means is that you need to use the third-party trademark as a “fair use” i.e. in a non-trademark sense or nontraditional sense, such as contrast or comparison with text added to clearly disclaim that you are not the trademark owner nor are you offering the associated goods and/or services of the third-party trademark owner. In addition, it is always a good idea to obtain permission from the third-party trademark owner clearly spelling out to them your intended use of their trademark just to be on the safe side, as your “fair use” of another’s trademark can be a questionable determination and cause an additional hassle.
DOMAIN NAMES
4. The point to keep in mind on domain name registrations is that they may or may not be in “use” trademark wise by others who have not previously registered your domain name and thus others may have existing trademark rights on your registered domain name, even if it is not exactly the same. Thus, your domain name registration may not even be used by you and you could be forced to surrender your domain name to the trademark owner.
What this results in is that you need to do a name clearance search trademark wise for your desired domain name to see if you can even use it, also it is a good idea to try to trademark your domain name to help prevent others from registering a domain name similar to yours. Many others also register multitudes of domain names that do not have websites or businesses while attempting to sell popular or commonly desirable domain names, you must exercise caution on acquiring these domain names as they may not be useable as others may already have trademark rights associated with a name that is confusingly similar, having a domain name that is confusingly similar (by typo or otherwise) to a trademark is typically called cyber squatting or typo squatting.
The reason for this problem is that a domain name is simply an electronic address, much the same as a phone number, resulting in a number of similar domain names that are only different by one letter, or the domain extension, or a dash, or a dot which would most likely be confusingly similar trademark wise, also these very close domain names can lead to customer confusion problems, wherein people could go to the wrong website very easily.
Thus, you could approach the owners of very similar domain names to yours purchase them, and then have these names link to your potential site so that your customers will find your site if they make typical misspellings or typos of your desired domain name. As a more advanced strategy you could also purchase slang derivatives of your domain name to preclude flaming or roasting sites.
5. PRIZES and GIVAWAYS
Giving the away items based on chance cannot require the recipient to purchase anything or to make significant effort in completing for instance a marketing survey, also make sure that the recipient is of legal contract age being 18 or older. In addition, a complete online disclosure of contest rules and probabilities of winning must be provided.
6. TERMS and CONDITIONS of SALE
The terms and conditions must be clear and easily accessible on the web site and must be a forced click through so that the purchaser has to go through the terms and conditions of sale prior to clicking either I accept, or I decline, also you should acquire as much information as possible about the purchaser during this process.
7. LINKS
Again, as previously mentioned be careful on the use of other's trademarks and avoiding “deep linking” unless you have permission to do so. Deep linking is when you link to another's web site past their homepage to within another’s website sub pages. Another item to avoid it is “framing” wherein you frame another’s website content within your website header / footer etc., you need to get permission to do this.
8. COPYRIGHT
Be careful about using others created content on your site, again it is always highly recommended to obtain permission to use other materials on your site even if it appears to be in the public domain, however, even if the material is unquestionably in the public domain you must always give proper credit to the source, never pass off other’s material as your own. On the other side of this, for the content that you create on the web site you should copyright protect it for your self.
9. DISCLAIMERS
This could include information or advice you give on the web site that a web site viewer may rely upon, thus you should disclaim any warranties of correctness, completeness, or of being up to date, and that the viewer should not exclusively rely upon the website content.
Also, your links to other web sites should be disclaimed as to your not having control over the other web sites content as your links over time may go dead or go to undesirable web sites.
10. CONFIDENTIALITY
Unencrypted email communications are not confidential, with this point being made clear to the web site viewer.
11. PRIVACY
As almost all web sites track usage, thus you need to disclose what information is collected and how that information is used to the web site viewer.
12. DISCLOSURE
Have a section of the web site completely disclose who is responsible for the website content, who owns it, with complete contact information (phone, fax, email, physical address, etc.) for the viewer to communicate to the web site owner.
13. PERMISSABLE USES
If the website viewer is allowed to use portions of your website for specific reasons, give the conditions of that permissible use, also state very clearly what uses of the web site are not permissible if applicable.
14. FINAL CAVEAT
Use your own web site frequently to discover errors, keep up to date, fix bad links, and the like.