Remove Content Using your Trademark through DMCA Takedown Notices

DMCA Takedown Notice Trademark

One way that your competitors will try to take advantage of the goodwill that you have developed in your brand is by using your brand name in their marketing materials, online. That will bring traffic that should have been directed to you, to them instead. How do you prevent this abuse of your brand? A great way to take down content that uses your trademark is by using a DMCA "Takedown Notice" which, when sent to an Internet Service Provider ("ISP") that is hosting the abusive content, requires the ISP to make that content inaccessible or remove it.

You can use the DMCA Takedown Notice Process if you also have copyright over your brand. Once the trademark is filed, a copyright can be filed for the logo and for the word mark, giving you copyright protection (so long as the brand is new and unique to you) and giving you a further avenue for protection of your brand online.

The DMCA process has several steps i) sending a notice to the ISP, host or the carrier of the abusive content or webpage; ii) you provide reasons for the takedown request in the notice; iii) the ISP or host removes the material or otherwise makes it inaccessible to viewers if they would like to avoid liability for the material; iv) the Internet Service Provider removes the content, and v) sends a message to the owner of the content, who will iv) have a chance to argue why the takedown should not be enforced. In practice, most content that receives Takedown Notices is illegitimate and the owner will either not respond or will be unsuccessful arguing for the content to be shown again. Accordingly, the content will stay down and your customers won't be confused or led astray.

Trademark-DMCA-Takedown

The DMCA provides for damages and attorney’s fees for “any person who knowingly materially misrepresents” the facts in a takedown notice, so as part of the DMCA preparation process we verify your trademark and copyright.

It is time-consuming to police your trademark on the web, but it can provide a great benefit to your brand recognition and can end the confusion that your competitors are trying to introduce into the marketplace. If you can remove some competitor content that is abusing your brand to steal sales, that is a win. We can file a DMCA Takedown Notice on short notice, and ensure that the damage from a competitor is minimized.