TM.Biz Launches New Workflow Tool to Secure Trademarks on Social Networks
May 24, 2010
Businesses get powerful new weapon for brand protection
BOSTON, May 24, 2010 — Today, TM.Biz (http://www.tm.biz) announces its beta launch for brand owners. TM.Biz is a workflow tool that provides brand owners, trademark lawyers, domain name resellers and marketing managers the ability to search, reserve, and watch usernames on the Internet’s top 500 social networks.
The TM.Biz Search service is a real-time exact search of usernames on the 500 top social networks. Users can segregate results by brand or client, review their search history, generate in-use reports of taken accounts and share their searches with colleagues and clients.
The TM.Biz Reserve service allows trademark owners to outsource the manual and tedious process of reserving brand names on hundreds of the most popular social networks.
TM.Biz completes all the stages of establishing user
accounts: initiating the sign-up process, adding contact information and verifying that accounts are active on up to 500 social networks.
The TM.Biz Watch service is an automated monitoring service that monitors over 500 social networks and notifies trademark owners via email if someone reserves their brand as a username.
“A presence on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter is increasingly becoming mandatory for brands and companies of all sizes. TM.Biz is a powerful new tool for the brand owner seeking to secure and protect their trademarks on social networks,” says Thomas Barrett, President of EnCirca.
“Even if businesses are not yet ready to develop a presence on social networks, they should reserve their brands now to protect against impersonators and guard against possible consumer confusion.”
The role of user names on social networks is following a similar pattern as domain names. But social networks have none of the protection mechanisms trademark owners enjoy with domain names. There is no dispute policy such as UDRP (ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy) to recover infringing trademarks; there is no public whois to determine the identity of who controls a user name; and there are no anti-cybersquatting laws designed to prevent consumer confusion over the source behind a trademark. In fact, most of the social networks do not even have a policy for recognizing the rights of trademark owners.
In addition, users are able to generate income by placing advertisements on their public profiles. An aftermarket for the re-sale of social network accounts has emerged, with auction sites such as eBay offering users the ability to sell their accounts to one another for hundreds of dollars.
The ability to resell accounts has led some users to warehouse thousands of names in hopes they might sell them later. In fact, one individual has amassed over one million Facebook accounts for resale.
“User names in social networks are the new battleground for trademark owners,” says Ken Hansen of Neustar, the operator of the .Biz registry. “Neustar is proud that EnCirca has selected the TM.Biz domain to launch this groundbreaking brand protection service.”
To become a beta tester for TM.Biz, please visit http://www.tm.biz.
About TM.Biz
What would you call a business service designed for trademark professionals? TM.Biz is an obvious choice. The .Biz domain extension clearly communicates the target market of businesses, large and small. The letters “TM” are universally known to stand for “trademark.” Thus, http://www.tm.biz is the perfect internet address for a new workflow tool for brand owners and trademark professionals to manage the lifecycle of trademarks on the social networks. The TM.Biz domain was allocated by Neustar, the .Biz registry operator (http://www.neustar.biz).
The .Biz domain is proving its worth not only as a marketing mechanism but also a true pro-business resource. .Biz was launched to meet the needs of high-performance web-enabled businesses of all sizes, anywhere in the world. Flexible, scalable, and secure, .Biz offers the robust technologies that firms demand in today’s competitive corporate environment, while providing a particularly valuable alternative for small and medium-size businesses.
Syracuse Man Charged With Stealing Trade Secrets
February 4, 2010
SYRACUSE, N.Y., Feb. 3 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — U.S. Attorney Richard S. Hartunian and FBI Special Agent in Charge John Pikus today announced the arrest of Shalin Jhaveri, 29, of Syracuse, N.Y. Jhaveri is charged by complaint with stealing trade secrets and proprietary information from his employer, Bristol-Myers-Squibb in violation of Title 18 U.S. Code Section 1832. If convicted, Jhaveri faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Jhaveri appeared today before U.S. Magistrate Judge George H. Lowe and was ordered held without bail. A detention hearing is scheduled for Feb. 8, 2010 at 1:30 p.m. in Syracuse.
According to the complaint, Jhaveri admitted being employed by Bristol-Myers-Squibb as a Technical Operations Associate from November of 2007 until his termination on Feb. 2, 2010. The complaint further alleges that during his employment, Jhaveri stole numerous trade secrets as part of a plan to establish a pharmaceutical firm in his native India which would compete with Bristol-Myers-Squibb in various markets around the world.
U.S. Attorney Hartunian praised the cooperation between the FBI and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service which participated jointly in the investigation. John Pikus, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI noted that theft of trade secrets and intellectual property has become a matter of increasing importance for federal law enforcement agencies who must, necessarily, pool their resources to address the growing problem.
The case is being prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen Green of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Syracuse. He can be reached at (315) 448-0672.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice
