The digital revolution has necessitated a re-examination of intellectual property issues by intellectual property holders, users and law makers. The nature of the digital age enables data to be easily copied, published and disseminated. Placing data, images, logos and text, for example, on internet websites, is child's play. This means that trade mark holders have a new frontier to battle. Misuse of their trade mark rights, deliberate or incidental, commercial or personal, arises in relation to cybersquatting and domain names, hyperlinking (particularly deep linking), framing in web pages and the use of meta-tags.

This chapter addresses issues relating to the impact of electronic commerce on the specific intellectual property rights of trade marks, patents and circuit layouts. It is intended to be only a brief overview of the law in these areas. The chapter will discuss the use and design of the internet, including hyperlinks, framing and meta-tags. Patents involving software and hardware are considered, and the specific intellectual property type known as circuit layouts is described. Cybersquatting and related issues are discussed in Chapters 8 and 9.

The nature of trade marks

A trade mark is ‘a sign used, or intended to be used, to distinguish goods or services dealt with or provided in the course of trade by a person from goods or services so dealt with or provided by any other person’. A trade mark is used in the course of trade to show a connection between a particular business and the goods or services it supplies.