Posts Tagged ‘rights’
Many small business owners and home based business owners put up a website describing their product or services. In addition to their ground business, this ensures they reach a greater number of consumers plus growing their brand or service. There are, however, many pitfalls and gray areas in owning a website; the legal system is only just beginning to enumerate them and prosecute offenders. It is these legalities of which the small business owner and the home based business owner must be aware in addition to some of the consequences of infringement. The cost to the business owner could be astronomical if he doesn’t take steps at the beginning to safeguard all his hard work.
First and foremost is registering the name and logo of the website. The business owner has done a lot of work designing the logo and site, writing the disclaimer, terms of use and legal statement. Creation of the site constitutes copyright, but the logo and design can be infringed upon and should be trademarked.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office, or USPTO, has pages to help the business owner with registration. This is going to cost, but not as much as legal fees, court costs and attorney fees required to sue whomever steals the business owner’s work. It takes between nine and twelve months in addition to some $300 to complete this task, but the rights are the business owner’s thereafter.
There are an unlimited amount of domain names available. Names uncomfortably close to the business owner’s domain name can cause confusion among customers, causing the business owner to lose revenue to a look-alike or cyber-squatter. Court cases can be researched in which the judge fined the person infringing upon the site. Business owner’s should institute a search of like-sounding domain names in order to prevent such cases from happening.
Registering the business owner’s social media pages is also a big step toward remaining free of website legal trouble. This immediately sets up the business owner’s name as unique and further establishes a common law ownership of a domain name. Social media is handy for promoting the business owner’s product or service and should likewise be protected. The business owner would be well advised to hire a trademark attorney to further educate him in addition to protecting him from other pitfalls and gray areas in website ownership.
Futures – In finance, a futures contract is a standardized contract between two parties to buy or sell a specified asset of standardized quantity and quality at a specified date at a price agreed today (the speculated price). The contracts are traded on a speculated exchange. These contracts are not “direct” securities like stocks, bonds, rights or warrants. They are still securities, however, though they are a type of derivative contract. The party agreeing to buy the underlying asset in the coming time assumes a long position, and the party agreeing to sell the asset in the coming time assumes a short position.
One advantage of trading in futures is that investor trade on “margins”. To purchase a contract (an agreement to buy or sell a commodity on or before a specified date) an investor need only risk a fraction of the contract value as his investment covers the “margin”. If the margin is set at 10%, a $2000 deposit will allow the trader to acquire a $20,000 contract which will give a far greater profit if the investor predicted the commodity movement correctly. Potential losses are typically protected by a “stop-loss order” which will limit the deficit to the original deposit amount. If an investor thinks the value of a commodity will rise he will “go long” and raise a futures contract to purchase a quantity of the commodity, in order to re-sell it once the price rise has taken place. If an investor thinks a commodity will fall, the will raise a contract to sell a quantity of the commodity, wait for the market to drop then “buy back” the commodity to settle the contract & release the profit.
Spread betting – is any of various types of wagering on the outcome of an event, where the pay-off is based on the accuracy of the wager, rather than a simple “win or lose” outcome, such as fixed-odds (or money-line) betting or pari-mutuel betting. A spread is a range of outcomes, and the bet is whether the outcome will be above or below the spread. Spread betting has been a major growth market in the UK in recent years, with the number of gamblers heading towards one million. This carries a high level of risk, with potential losses or gains far in excess of the original money wagered. In the UK, these bets are regulated by the Financial Services Authority rather than the Gambling Commission.
The general purpose of spread betting is to create an active market for both sides of a binary wager, even if the outcome of an event may appear a priori to be biased towards one side or the other. In a sporting event (e.g. a basketball game) a strong team may be matched up against a historically weaker team; almost every game will have a favorite and an underdog. If the wager is simply “Will the favorite win?” more bets are likely to be made for the favorite, possibly to such an extent that there would be very few bettors willing to take the underdog.